The Social World

Tag: Women

  • The Last Westerner captures the American Southwest

     The epigraph to this novel is from Chretien de Troyes’s Lancelot, one of the French author’s Arthurian romances. It is fitting because The Last Westerner is a medieval romance, as well as an epic set in the American Southwest in the closing years of the 20th century. The dedication is to the author’s wife and to the late Edward Abbey, a personal friend. It is equally fitting because The Last Westerner is a western novel in setting and theme and will bring to mind other western novels such as Abbey’s The Brave Cowboy (1956) and Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses (1992). Abbey’s book is subtitled, An Old Tale in a New Time. That could be the subtitle for The Last Westerner too, and as for pretty horses, Chilton Williamson, Jr.’s novel is full of them. For this is a story about the search for a beautiful horse, a Peruvian Paso named Cortez. And as far as the Western landscape it is here too in all its awful grandeur, evoked beautifully by riveting descriptive prose like that found in McCarthy.

    The story begins at the Bar Nun Ranch in southeastern Utah, owned by Jody James. The prized show horse is hers, and when it’s stolen, thus initiating the action of the novel, her lover Jeb Ryder vows to recover it for her. Ryder is a retired range detective in his early 50s, and what follows is a story that turns into an epic quest on horseback through the canyons and desert mountains of western New Mexico and eastern Arizona, a journey that finally ends in Mexico. The horse changes hands many times, and once is running with a herd of wild horses. Early on, Ryder acquires a helper, a 16-year-old Navajo kid named John-Wayne Bilagody, who was one of the thieves. He wants the horse too, for his girlfriend. Williamson means us to think of Don Quixote’s loyal retainer Sancho. It is not the only reference or evocation of that greatest of novels. For Ryder, like the famous Don, is trying to live according to values of an older more honorable time. Like him, he sometimes looks ridiculous, as when in a fever-induced delirium he charges the radio telescopes at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory west of Socorro, New Mexico. Ryder is the last westerner, then, in two distinct senses. He is a holdover from the Old American West of history and folklore, and he is a western knight-errant in a postmodern America.

    While Ryder is convalescing at the Quantrill ranch in Catron County, New Mexico, John-Wayne takes over the narration. Ryder has gotten himself into trouble with the law, but the ranch owner, Jack Quantrill, is a local lawyer who knows how to deal with a judge. Quantrill brings to this reviewer’s mind Gavin Stevens, the gentleman lawyer from William Faulkner’s novel Intruder in the Dust. Like Stevens, Quantrill is a regional patriot and lover of books, rooted in the land and loyal to the values of another time.

    Ryder has a female counterpart also, Carmen Dominguin, a beautiful woman of Spanish and English ancestry, who is the leader of an armed band of Mexican insurgents who have crossed the border into the United States to escape pursuing government forces. Now they have Cortez, whom Carmen names Juarez (after the famous Mexican revolutionary). She promises to return the horse, but not until the brigada gets back to Mexico. So Ryder and John-Wayne must ride with them south through the remnant of what Williamson calls “the ancient American wilderness.” It is still there, even today, crisscrossed by highways of course, which the brigada crosses at night to avoid detection. The greatest danger to the two Americans is the second-in-command, Humberto, who wants to kill them to simplify things, and to eliminate a rival (he is in love with Carmen also); but they are protected by Carmen, who lives and commands by a code of honor very similar to Ryder’s.

    Williamson has a fine eye for detail, and his prose captures, or recreates, the subtle changes in climate (fall is approaching), as well as the changes in light and temperature from early morning to twilight, and from day to day as the nights grow colder and the light becomes more angular. Nor does he neglect describing the physical work of making camp, finding water, shooting game, bedding down.

    The last section takes place in the State of Sonora in Northern Mexico. The ordeal is over, but the story is not, nor the romance. Ryder claims Cortez (or Tortuga, as he has nicknamed him), but pays John-Wayne for his help, plenty for him to buy his own girlfriend a horse. Ryder and Carmen spent several weeks in the charming colonial-era city of Hermosillo, and then journey to the Sea of Cortez. At Bahia Kino, a fisherman offers to take them to visit an island. They are nearly trapped by a storm, but escape. Ryder, being a man of his word, returns with the horse to Jody and her splendid Utah ranch. But he finds that things have changed. Jody is not exactly overjoyed to see Ryder, or the horse (it’s three months of living in the wild have ruined it for showing). And so Ryder is a free man again, free to return to Mexico and Carmen. Searching for months for a prized possession, he has found what is infinitely more important. For Ryder, the son of chivalry, “women are the whole world, and the promise of it.”

  • Are America’s women heading for the exit?

    Life is apparently so disagreeable in Donald Trump’s America that 40 percent of women aged between 15 and 44 want to leave. That is four times higher than the 10 percent who wanted to quit the US in 2014. According to Gallup, which conducted the poll, nearly half the nation’s younger women have “lost faith in America’s institutions.” This disenchantment accelerated after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which enshrined the constitutional right to abortion.

    Younger American men are bearing up better. Only 19 percent share women’s distaste for the Donald, a 21 percent differential which is the largest recorded by Gallup since it began asking the question in 2007.

    As they point out, the question is about the “desire” to relocate, so probably only a minority of the 40 percent will leave. Nonetheless, concludes Gallup, “the data indicate that millions of younger American women are increasingly imagining their futures elsewhere.”

    And where might that be? Canada is the first choice (11 percent) while 5 percent dream of a new life in New Zealand, Italy or Japan. Canada has that nice Mark Carney as its Prime Minister but be warned, women of America: our northern neighbor isn’t the same country that it was a decade ago.

    A report last year in the National Post was headlined “Sexual assaults, robberies surging in Canada’s cities.” The Trudeau administration had tried to blame soaring crime on the aftermath of the harsh Covid restrictions, but the Macdonald Laurier Institute’s “urban violent crime report” rubbished that theory.

    Crime of all types had been on the rise since 2016, particularly sexual assault, which had increased by 77 percent between 2013 and 2023. The Canadian media is curiously reticent to examine what is behind this surge, which has coincided with record levels of immigration. A clue perhaps might be found in the response to a parliamentary question asked earlier this year by Canadian Conservative MP Blaine Calkins. Troubled by the 31 percent increase in foreigners incarcerated in Canadian prisons, he wanted to know where they came from and what crimes they’d committed. The majority had been convicted of violent and sexual crimes, and the two countries most represented among felons were Jamaica and India.

    Something else that has increased in Canada in recent years is the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood. A report in June by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy warned that Canada was facing a “rising national security risk” from the shadowy Islamist organization. Its goal is to establish a global caliphate, and the institute expressed its concern that Canada has allowed the Brotherhood to “grow and spread radical Islamist ideology, often benefiting from federal funding.”

    With this in mind, if some American women find themselves going cold on Canada, what about Japan? In 2023, Japan was ranked 125th out of 146 countries in terms of gender equality (the US was 43rd and Italy 79th). The World Economic Forum report noted the low female representation in Japanese politics and industry.

    Furthermore, cases of sexual harassment on public transport have risen sharply in recent years — what the Japanese call “chikan,” or groping. Most incidents are committed by Japanese men against foreigners.

    So if not Japan, what about the dolce vita of Italy? Unfortunately, Italy is also experiencing a wave of sexual violence. Incidences have increased by 50 percent in the past five years, with crimes peaking in 2024.

    Some 43 percent of men convicted of sexual crimes were foreigners, prompting Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, to state that, “I will be called a racist, but there is a greater incidence, unfortunately, in cases of sexual violence, by immigrants.” She added that this was particularly true of those “who arrived illegally.”

    There are other options in Europe for American women. What about Paris, the City of Love? The smell of fresh croissants, the sight of Gallic heartthrobs. Oh la la! Alas, the real Paris bears no resemblance to Emily in Paris.

    Earlier this year, a French government report revealed that seven in ten women in the greater Paris region have suffered some form of abuse while traveling on public transport. Recently, an Egyptian man allegedly tried to rape a young woman on a train just outside the French capital and, as a result, a petition has been launched demanding women-only train cars.

    One could always try London, but women there are also demanding greater security on the city’s Tube network. Another phenomenon on the rise in both Britain and France is the segregation of the sexes as the Muslim population grows. In October, a Mosque in London organized a fundraising run that was open to everyone except women and girls over the age of 12. In November, a poll was published in France that revealed that 45 percent of French Muslim men and 57 percent of women under 35 practice some form of segregation, such as the refusal to shake hands or receive medical treatment from a person of the opposite sex, or to visit a mixed-gender swimming pool.

    In December 2015, Trump lamented what had become of Paris, making his remarks a few weeks after Islamist terrorists had slaughtered 130 people during the Bataclan attack. “Look at what happened in Paris, the horrible carnage, and frankly… Paris is no longer the same city it was.”

    He was right. Paris is no longer the city it was, and nor is London or some Italian cities, such as Milan, where, according to city councillor Daniele Nahum, “the antisemitic situation is becoming unmanageable.”

    The 40 percent of American women who dream of starting a new life elsewhere should take note. The grass in Trumpland might actually be greener.

  • Down with exclamation points!

    Down with exclamation points!

    Punctuation is a gendered thing. I’ve been trying to stop myself overusing exclamation points and it’s been difficult. Exclamation points are girly because they’re a way of taking the sting out of what you say; they make any pronouncement seem more tentative, less serious. They’re the equivalent of a disarming smile, a marker that says: “No offense!” You add them to the end of a sentence to prevent anyone thinking you’re being bossy or critical. They’re an economical form of non-confrontation.

    Women use them far more than men. Almost 20 years ago, a study in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication found that women used nearly three-quarters of the exclamation marks in electronic messages, but it identified the tic as “markers of friendly interaction.” As far as I can work out, nothing has changed since. Reviewing, gloomily, my own record of “Hope that helps!” or “Yes please!” I find this is less to do with enthusiasm than with a desire to please, or at least a desire not to seem pushy. I’ve just sent someone a message saying, “Get ahead of the herd” (I meant, “Just get on with it”) and I’ve had to stop myself putting in an exclamation mark to take the sting out of being bossy. Now he probably does think I’m bossy. Then I ask myself whether the silverback males I know use punctuation the same way and the answer is: nope.

    Kisses, or Xs, serve something of the same purpose, with the difference that women mostly use them with other women. Xs are another marker of non-aggression. They say: friend, I come in peace, even though I may be complaining or telling you what to do. It’s a bit like how younger people use the Australian uplift at the end of sentences, turning every statement into a question. It’s a way of avoiding seeming dogmatic or assertive – but that’s generational rather than gendered.

    One friend has beaten me to austere punctuation. “Nowadays when I write to men,” she says, “I am brief, unapologetic and focused on the message. This is a recent thing. I realized that for as long as I have been writing to other people, I had thought I needed to charm them. I thought this was what everyone wanted. They don’t, particularly men.” She’s now binary in her communications: entirely dispassionate or psychotically overnuanced.

    There is a place for charm in written social intercourse in which punctuation plays a role, but part of the problem of contemporary interaction is that our categories are now blurred. We write to our bank manager (if we’ve got one) with the same easy informality as to a close friend. We’ve gone from “Dear Madam” to “Hi Melanie” (a very tetchy message to me from a police press office began that way), and we sign off with “Cheers” in both contexts, which means we use with colleagues or superiors the same sort of formula we’d use socially. It’s the democratization of communication, and it’s confusing. Perhaps we should stop being ingratiating – exclamation points and kisses are just that – and go for plainness if that’s what’s needed. “Please” and “thank you” work well – though again, it’s all about nuance.

    As for the other trick to ensure you don’t sound dogmatic, ellipses, I wonder if they’re gendered too. These are deep waters…

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 8, 2025 World edition.