This fits surprisingly well...

What X-Men: Days of Future Past says about the Muggles vs Wizards debate

Its one of the longest running debates on the internet. Quite simply, who would win - muggles vs wizards?

I've had FB conversations running into the hundreds of comments on this topic, with opinion typically divided about 50:50. Some are adamant that the wizards would 'obviously' win, while others, including myself, caution that in the long-term the Muggles would likely dominate.

Part of the reason this debate goes on so long is that it hasn't ever really been depicted in fiction. We haven't seen a film or book about it (though admittedly I'd love to try writing some fanfiction along those lines someday). However, there are other proxies in media we can draw upon as supporting evidence.

X-Men Days of Future Past came out a few weeks ago, and depicts a scenario quite similar to a hypothetical Muggles vs wizards war (spoiler alert). In the near future, mutants have been hunted down to the brink of extinction. One must immediately wonder - how did this happen? With members of their kind having the ability to shoot fire, control people's minds, teleport, transform their bodies, telekinetically control metal or the weather, phase through walls, heal from almost any injury, and so on, what could possibly defeat them?

There is an answer however -

Despite their powers, the mutants are badly outmatched by the 'Sentinels' - a class of newly built machines designed to detect and kill mutants. Relentless, all-but numberless and very hard to destroy, before long the mutants can only keep running. Ultimately there is nowhere to hide.

We see in the film how the various superpowers the mutants have prove ineffective against the Sentinels. Flames that would easily boil a human alive hardly bother them, while freezing them will only keep them are bay temporarily. They can't be mind controlled, confused or otherwise attacked telepathically. Even Magneto struggles against them, as they are made of a composite material without any metals. Here's a clip here -

While admittedly the technology required to build them is said to involve 'tissue samples taken from Mystique' so that they can rapidly adapt their bodies to new conditions, we can assume this is just a handy plot device. There's no reason to believe that advanced machines of this nature aren't just around the corner in real life. They're essentially terminators after all, and given how quickly robotics and drone technology are advancing, its not hard to believe we'll be able to build similar creations within a few decades.

The point I am making is this - most of the superpowers and special abilities you see among the X-Men have strong parallels in Harry Potter. Sentinel-like machines would be immune to most curses. They couldn't be imperiused, or tortured with the cruciatos curse, while Avada Kedavra would presumably be useless. Like inferi, they don't bleed, rendering Sectumsempra ineffective. You couldn't perform memory or confundus charms on them, or any of the other little tricks wizards use to hide from Muggles.

Sure there are some spells the wizards could still use. Wingardium Leviosa could perhaps be used to levitate them away, while violent curses like Confringo or Reducto could still blast them apart, but how many times will that be good for? A skilled wizard could take out a few, but given our advanced industrial society, we could surely make many millions of them. Almost half a million tanks were built by the warring sides in WW2 for instance, and that was back in the 1940s. Some 60 million cars are now built every year, and in a wartime situation that number could be multiplied quite a few times over.

The exact demographics of the wizarding world are somewhat in dispute, but the wizards appear to consist of somewhere between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 10,000 people worldwide. This comes to a total population of around 1-5 million. It seems we could easily build a hundred Sentinels, or even a thousand, for every wizard alive within a few short years.

Looking at some elements of the wider debate, and thinking it through logically, most wizarding defenses could be penetrated one way or another. An invisibility cloak might hide you (presuming it blocks all forms of radiation, including infrared) but it doesn't omit sound. A person's footsteps, or even their heartbeat, would give them away instantly to a sensitive microphone, with which the Sentinels would surely be equipped.

Alternatively, a wizard could perhaps conjure up a box around themselves, and perform an unbreakable charm on it. Assuming that 'unbreakable' is meant literally (i.e. you could drop a nuke on it, or fling it into a black hole, and it still wouldn't break) this doesn't meant that the contents on the box would still be safe. Try picking up the box and dropping it from a tall cliff. The box may not break - but the people inside will.

A demonstration of precisely this occurs in the movie The Incredibles. Superpowered Violet is able to project shields around herself. These easily stop bullets and other small objects, but at one point Syndrome's Robot - which clearly weighs many hundreds of tonnes, flings itself down on top of her, knocking her down and almost killing her when she crashes against her own shield.

It also says nowhere that an unbreakable barrier doesn't permit heat to pass through it for instance, or other forms of radiation. Try lighting a fire under the wizard's unbreakable hidey-hole, or target a laser on it, to boil them alive inside. A flame-freezing charm might avert this, but one wonders how powerful such charms really are. There are obvious limits to magic. A wizard can easily levitate a feather, but not a mountain. They can presumably survive a fire, which burns at around 1,000C, but could they survive a nuclear explosion, where the temperature can get into the millions of degrees?

Wizards can also apparate, giving them a very handy method of escape, but one wonders exactly how many times it could be used. Eventually even wizards have to sleep, and it only requires one mistake out of a thousand to let the Sentinels catch you. Then there is the question of how you'd be alerted to their presence in the first place. Accurate guns can target an enemy kilometers away, before they even know you're there. Check out this video of an American helicopter attacking insurgents in Iraq for instance. Its hovering in the dark miles away before it opens fire. How does a wizard deflect a bullet they can't even hear coming? (fast forward to 2 minutes in)

One further point would be the question of how the Muggles would even find the wizards in the first place. Refuges like Hogwarts and Diagon Alley have presumably gone undetected for centuries. There are likely ways around this however. It is repeatedly said that electronics don't work around Hogwarts. This would actually seem to be quite a vulnerability however. This means that, like sending a canary down a coal mine, an inexplicably malfunctioning machine would be a sure sign of magic nearby. There are said to be further charms on Hogwarts to ward off muggles - including making the castle look like an old ruin, making intruders forget why they are there, or alternatively causing them to suddenly remember urgent appointments and compel them to leave.

These would seem fairly weak in the face of the modern world however. It might have been enough to prevent the odd peasant from wondering onto Hogwarts' grounds back in the Middle Ages, but how does it affect aerial or satellite surveillance? Here's what you do - spot the ruin, send in a few scouts, and if they come back looking somewhat bamboozled (as if by magic) try dropping a nuclear bomb on it.

There's also the unmistable genetic trace of wizarding blood. The way it's depicted in the books, the ability to use magic is obviously a recessive gene, one passed down through the generations. The Harry Potter books occur in the 1990s, which is before the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003. As of 2014 it should have been possible by now, or would be soon, to detect these genes through routine DNA tests. Indeed - this same mechanism is used by the sentinels to detect mutants, as well as people who might one day give birth to mutants. X-Men again delivers.

Now there are some possible methods of the wizards causing mass death and destruction among the Muggle populace that I've seen suggested. They could infiltrate the Whitehouse and the Kremlin, imperiuse a number of world leaders, and spark a nuclear war killing billions. Even this wouldn't be an end-all however. The world's nuclear arsenals have been steadily shrinking for decades, and even a successful strike would only kill a large chunk of the world's population. Muggles would still outnumber wizards by a hundred or thousand to one. Hell even if only New Zealand survived - with its four million people, the wizards would still be outnumbered.

There are other suggestions, like putting large batches of sleeping potion in the water supply, or broadcasting a TV image of a Basilisk's face. These could certainly kill (or in the latter case - incurably petrify) millions of people, but far from everyone. Many people already get their water supplies from rainwater, and of course not everyone would be watching TV at any given time.

Even major losses like these the Muggles could easily recover from. Our population is exploding at a rate of almost 100 million people a year. We've survived world wars, bubonic plagues, famines, earthquakes, hurricanes...more than a million of us die in traffic accidents alone every year and no one bats an eye.

The bottom line is this - no matter how hard they tried, wizards would be unlikely to ever compete with cancer, malaria, AIDS or heart disease as a leading cause of death among the human population.

There is one possible caveat to all this however, though it is by no means a trump card. The X-Men in Days of Future Past do eventually escape the Sentinels. This is by sending a message back through time to prevent their creation in the first place, which is the real subject of the film. Time travel does exist in the Wizarding World, however J.K Rowling herself has stated that Time Turners can only safely be used to go back a few hours -

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Time-Turner#Nature

There are further problems with this. If wizards can utilize time travel, then why couldn't Muggles? As far as I'm aware, its never been said that a Muggle couldn't use a Time Turner if they stumbled across one. For a wizard to go back a significant time period, i.e. to make more than a tactical difference to their situation, they would risk preventing themselves from ever being born in the first place, making it a case of Mutually Assured Destruction. This is probably the best the wizards could hope for.

Other than that however, in a full-on war against the Muggle world, the wizards probably wouldn't have a hope of winning in the long run. At the rate our population is expanding, and our technology is advancing, we're rapidly leaving them behind. Think Nazi Germany invading the Soviet Union. The German armies were devastating at first, but the Soviet's numberless reserves eventually wore them down. An old quote by Von Clausewitz also comes to mind - 'Never fight the same enermy too long, or he will learn all your tricks...'

Think also of the sorts of technology we'll likely have access to in the near future, everything from interstellar travel and antimatter bombs to being able to upload our consciousness into machines. Before long its no longer a question of Muggles vs Wizards, but every devastating hard sci-fi weapon you've ever heard of...vs a few wizards.

It'd be a slaughter.

To conclude - the wizards can run, but they can't hide.

My Qualms with Feminism in a Nutshell

*Current statistics for Australia

Why the Manosphere is not a complete waste of space

The ‘Manosphere’ refers to the recent springing up of a number of apparently ‘anti-feminist’ websites on the internet, most notably ReturnofKings.com, created by Daryush Valizadeh, who blogs under the name ‘Roosh’.

Articles on the site cover a fairly broad range of topics, from politics to history to society. There are different bloggers with different opinions, but overall the site tends to be very socially conservative and argue in favor of traditional gender roles, i.e. – that it is generally best if men stick to acting 'masculine' and women stick to acting 'feminine'.

Predictably, many others on the internet, feminists in particular, have condemned the mere existence of these websites. The Southern Poverty Law Center in the US has labelled Return of Kings a hate site, while it has been described on Jezebel, with their usual charm, as a 'disgusting, misogynistic website, a non-stop stream of vitriolic, horrifying garbage' and a 'compendium of fetid little trolls who sit in a troll-pile, rubbing bits of fossilized troll-poop together while gleefully squalling about how much they hate ugly chicks...'

I’ll admit many aspects of the site are distasteful. The site’s policy of banning comments from ‘women and homosexuals’ speaks for itself. It’s a very blokey, conservative website. Having said that however, there are a few things I’d like to conclude. I’ve been scrolling through Return of King articles every now and then for a few months now, and many of them I've found refreshingly candid. For instance - 

http://www.returnofkings.com/9932/the-15-magical-years-of-womanhood

http://www.returnofkings.com/18782/fat-shaming-week

http://www.returnofkings.com/25448/5-reasons-why-the-gender-pay-gap-is-bogus

http://www.returnofkings.com/29099/how-trigger-warnings-silence-dissent-and-protect-fragile-egos

These are the sorts of articles you’d never see on the Huffington Post, or CNN, or really anywhere else. They would certainly never see the light of day on Jezebel, where they'd be labeled ‘sexist’ and ‘misogynist’ quicker than you could blink. Yet, as someone who tries to be an impartial judge of everything I read on the internet, no matter how shocking it may seem at first, I can't help but admit I've found myself slowly nodding along as I read them. Even though I generally consider myself to be a left-wing progressive, much of their criticism of the left rings very true. I would urge people to have a thorough read of the site before criticizing it.

Having said that, there’s a lot of ridiculous crap on the website as well, especially from those railing against homosexuals and abortion. A lot of the comments are completely over the top as well. An article may make a basically well-reasoned argument that women might be underrepresented in parliaments because they tend to have less interest in politics for instance, only for it to be followed by a flood of comments by obviously bitter men who take things completely over the top. From one single article we have examples like:

'Tumblr social justice warriors are by far the biggest pieces of shit humanity has ever seen.'

'professional victims are nothing but closeted fascists. by trying to ban the publication of articles, trying to ban words and plain-old being bitchy with anyone with a dissenting opinion, you fucked-up women are bringing a new dark age unto humanity. 1984, anyone?'

'the tumblr community is the most closed-minded fanatical hypocritical bunch of sorry excuses for human beings since jezebel. just goes to show that when you get a bunch of hens together, NOTHING GOOD CAN COME OUT OF IT'

Regardless of the pros and cons of the website, it is a separate question entirely to ask – so why does the manosphere exist? Where did all this seemingly bitter, hateful men come from? For a typical Jezebel user, it seems an impossible question to answer. Likewise, Manosphere users seem to have total contempt for feminists as well. 

So please, parties on both sides of this social and political divide, allow me to reveal the secrets of the universe to you - as to why you find each other so utterly baffling.

When it comes to explaining how people act in society - an important question that ties into all sorts of fields from politics to economics, there has been a major divide between left and right in recent history. Basically, it comes down to the question of nurture vs nature. Are people's actions inherently programmed, or can they be molded by society?

It should be obvious which side believes in which. The left believes that concepts like race, class and, of particular relevance here - gender, are manmade. They have been created by people, and thus can be unmade in turn.

The right meanwhile, believes that such distinctions in society are generally a lot more inherent. Thus, they cannot be changed, and any attempts to do so will only end in disaster.

Herein lies the impasse. Feminists and other progressives view initiatives to enforce equality between men and women as beneficial, if not a moral imperative. If men's disproportionate wealth and influence in society is an unnatural phenomenon, then by definition women must be oppressed, and freeing them from that oppression can only be a good thing.

Manosphere users however, see it as self-evident that, for various reasons I'll elaborate on in a moment, men's greater influence in society is not a mistake, but to some extent completely natural. Women perform different roles in society because they are better suited to them. Such roles are not necessarily worse mind you, just different. Many Return of Kings articles point to things like far higher accident and death rates among male employees as reasons for why they are paid more, not because of any fundamental bias.

Now as for the reasons why, we enter very politically incorrect territory here, but some of the major reasons can be summed up quite succinctly. They basically come down to a list of inherent differences suggested to exist between men and women. While individual Return of Kings bloggers may differ as to the specifics of this list, a brief summary could go something like this:

- Men are generally physically larger than women, thus better suited to many more physically demanding jobs
- Men are generally more aggressive then women, thus tend to handle confrontations and deal with the stress of leadership positions better
- Men generally have higher sex drives then women, thus tend to go to greater lengths to impress potential partners

Notice that in these differences, intelligence is not necessarily a factor. Even Manosphere users tend to accept (though I'm sure this would still draw some contention) that women are just as intelligent as men, rather, they tend to have fewer incentives to use this intelligence and turn it into something productive. Sex drives have greater importance here then you may think. Basically, they say, a typical man will go to the ends of the Earth to impress a decent woman. Most women however, are already so saturated with attention from men that there is little need to do this. Given that surveys tend to agree that men desire sex about 2-3 times as often as women, I can't deny they've got a point.

Taking the above differences to their logical conclusion, it is no wonder that their still exists a 'gender pay gap'. Men tend to dominate senior positions, particularly when it comes to parliaments and corporate boards, because relatively few women have proven themselves able to function under such stressful environments. Even lower down, men tend to be paid more because they work longer hours (54% of employee working hours are undergone by men), will perform more dangerous jobs (with 92% of workplace deaths suffered by men) and are physically more capable (only small numbers of women are generally able to pass the fitness tests to become police, firefighters or soldiers for instance).

You will have to do your own research on these differences, but they are the real, fundamental bone of contention here. They are an alternative explanation to mere 'sexism' as to why there are so many areas of society, from parliaments to prisons, where men and women are not split 50-50.

If the feminists are correct, and the above differences are of little real significance, then the Manosphere will be proven wrong in the long run. If these differences are a lot more inherent however, then we will find that the 'glass ceiling' feminists often complain about is not made of glass as all, but instead a block of solid iron that nature herself has put in place. Furthermore, by trying to impose quotas and affirmative action programs that corral greater numbers of  women into these positions, you'll be causing a great deal of unhappiness for both sexes, not to mention potential damage to the economy and society to a whole. Plenty of Return of Kings articles follow this mantra.

Regardless of who is right, I will side with the Manosphere on one issue. Dissent in a community should really never be silenced, no matter how cruel or bizarre it might sound at the time. The hysterical overreactions of feminists to the mere existence of bloggers like Roosh has proven that a deep insecurity truly exists in their worldview. He has definitely touched an open nerve. I find it odd also that Roosh has been called the 'most hated man on the internet'. I wonder, what exactly has he done? He hasn't murdered anyone has he? As far as I'm aware he may not even have a criminal record, yet he is despised as if he eats newborn babies for breakfast every day.

No, he is hated because he dares to tell a powerful group of smug, supremely confident people that they might be wrong, that in this case equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes may not completely coincide, and I would say to the Jezebel users of the world, how can you be sure that you're not wrong? Here in the west the wage gap narrowed significantly until about the 1990s, but little progress has been made since then. Might we have taken things too far in demanding equality between two groups of people that may actually be quite fundamentally different? The Manosphere raises a number of compelling arguments you will have to refute, and not just by labeling them 'troll-arguments' and screeching about misogyny, but with calm, well-reasoned logic. I find myself wondering as to the eventual outcome of this debate. At the moment, the Manosphere's rise seems meteoric, but they are still a small, fringe movement that could peak and fade off into obscurity any time soon. Only time will tell.

At the very least, I can't say they're wrong about everything. For that alone, they are not a complete waste of space, as much of the internet seems to think. These guys deserve to be heard. I'd urge anyone interested in gender politics to give Return of Kings a try. It might just shake your worldview a little, which in my experience, is never a bad thing.

Australia's new immigration policy in a nutshell

When Fry meets May: