Rink rant with a moment of reflection

I went to the rink a few weeks ago and saw something that bothered me. (I realize that’s no surprise.) But this was something subtle. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

At the rink was a family of four: dad, mom, and two young daughters. The mom at one point was probably borderline attractive, but now that she’s married with kids and no longer has to put effort into her appearance, she’s fat, wears boyish glasses, has a butch haircut, and a perpetually has a bitchy sourpuss expression on her face. She was also wearing an expensive looking suede jacket.

The daughters were young and very close in age, and the parents (read: the mother) had them dressed identically: hot pink helmets, white vests, pink shirts underneath the vests, while pants, pink gloves, and white-and-pink skates.

The dad… oh the poor dad. He had on a pair of his own skates, and from what I saw, he clearly had some skill on them. But the skill was clearly going to waste as he had to stick close by to the wife and kids. He was dressed in a battered old grey sweatsuit, and was wearing a backpack – on the ice – with ancillary items for the daughters. (Camera, waters, etc.)

I finally figured out what was bothering me. This family, and the dad in particular, is the personification of the degraded state of masculinity, marriage and fatherhood in today’s society: drab and forced to sacrifice his own talents to the menial service a shrew wife and phony, saccharine-cutesy kids. While the wife and kids spend on colorful or expensive coats, he has to wear old clothes. While the wife and kids carried nothing, he bore their burden (the backpack that was filled with nothing important anyway). While the wife and kids stumbled around the ice, he had to stay with them instead of using his talent and skating free all over the ice. The man was a slave to three females, and I could tell by the way they interacted that they had no regard for him whatsoever.

And so it is in American society, from the smallest unit (the nuclear family) to the populace as a whole. In families, feminists write articles in womens' magazines and go on Oprah and teach women to ignore their husbands wishes and focus on their own, and to wantonly cheat on and leave husbands if that's what their whim -- and doing so is striking a blow for the sisterhood against the patriarchy. In society at large, there are scores of womens and children's programs that cost countless dollars out of the public treasury. Our pockets are picked and our talents wasted as taxpayers slave to pay for programs that promote feminite nonsense about all men being rapist oppressors.

Our lives are made smaller by people like this, whether in the corridors of our own homes or in the corridors of power. These tyrants -- and make no mistake, they are tyrants -- force upon us responsibilities that are not our own, and we accept them either to quell rancor (in the home), or at the point of a gun (from the state).

Men of the world, unite! All you have to lose is a sexless, frigid harpy who has no regard for you anyway. Keep you money and freedom and talents for yourself. You at least appreciate them.