Yesterday I was sitting at lunch with my brother-in-law in a pub at lunch. His wife and my wife had gone across the road to look at home decorations: we have just moved into a new house and they are moving into a new build in about four weeks. So decoration has been a topic of conversation.

And we talked about Feb 14. Every pub and cafe and restaurant had promotions for a romantic dinner. We hated the promotion, but we know our society expects us to do something. So we will…

Today I looked at the paper and there was a supplement on how to be romantic. A little too late for anyone organizing things. But enough to flame the expectations of half of our species.

For all men must he held at fault if romance dies, and this is accounted as abuse. This is Scott talking about clinical issues he has seen: Can confirm.

In the original post, I revealed two stories from my experience. The first was of a man who’s life was ruined for the initial act of having a loud argument with his wife. Even the police report in that case revealed that the police had no evidence that there was any violence and the wife corroborated the mans story. Only the names were changed in the narrative.The second was an example of a psychopath who practically killed his wife and butchered her small dog in front of her and both of these men were in the same group together.

I made the case, as part of hypothesis #1 that the most important feature of these kinds of groups is lost when this occurs, and it was a regular problem in my (again) 3 years, 3,000 hours, 800N size experiment.

In my estimate, if you were take the “Jim” story and call that the extreme left tail of our distribution, and the “dog butcher” guy as the extreme right tail, the distribution would be significantly skewed leftward with an enormous amount of variance in the continuum that occupies all the cases in the middle.

In descriptive statistics, positive skew is part of a larger concept called kurtosis and it speaks to how distributions are sometimes not normal. So hypothesis #2 would be, “I think we might be using a nuclear bomb in the shape of a cookie cutter to kill a fly.”

I also take a look in that post at the possibility that maybe, just maybe that cookie cutter shaped nuclear weapon has been created in the context of a Duluth-driven family law system, with (mostly) male police officers (who instinctively act like white knights in the face of a crying woman) and that it might be time to take a look at the inherent justice of a system that cannot be used rationally to describe:

• Lesbian domestic violence
• Gay domestic violence
• Female on male domestic violence

Because none of those three fit the “male privilege” power and control stuff that the Duluth model requires facilitators, cops, judges and probation officers to use. That would be hypothesis #3.

Finally, you could argue that my hypothesis #4 is, “maybe because of the intimate nature of these incidents, and the incentives involved, the laws we have created, and so on, we over did it? Maybe clear cases of assault should be illegal, and leave it at that.”

This is a policy argument that reveals I have a libertarian streak in me. It is perfectly open for critique.

We are of Christ, which means that we are subversive in this time and in this world. We are not to work by emotions, but instead listen to our conscience and keep it clean, for otherwise we will become shipwrecks.

What I find interesting is that the editors tried to put the last part of this passage in ellipses, but it is Pauline teaching.

1 Timothy 1:18-2:15

^1:18I am giving you these instructions, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies made earlier about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, ¹⁹having faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have suffered shipwreck in the faith; ²⁰among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have turned over to Satan, so that they may learn not to blaspheme.

^2:1  First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, ²for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. ³This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, ⁴who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
⁵For
there is one God;
there is also one mediator between God and humankind,
Christ Jesus, himself human,
⁶        who gave himself a ransom for all
— this was attested at the right time. ⁷For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.

⁸I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument; ⁹also that the women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, ¹⁰but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. ¹¹Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. ¹²I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. ¹³For Adam was formed first, then Eve; ¹⁴and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. ¹⁵Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.

Back to decoration and beauty. It is important. If you don’t want to cite me, cite Edith Schaeffer. Working out what is appropriate is difficult. There are people who are quite immodest but totally covered, even offensive in their garb, for it proclaims their allegiance to another god or demon.

But the women we remember are those who pour their lives into others: doing good, often with little reward. Often with tears. Often without a single bit of what the world calls romantic. They do their duty.

If as men, we can comfort them and lead them, we are doing well.

But those who would call this abuse shipwreck not only their families but their own faith.