If ever there were a time to use this stupid term, it’s now: Wow, just wow. Via Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit we are all treated to this bit of uninformed tripe. It is marred mostly by an immature worldview when it comes to masculinity, the sort of cooties logic that the sexes must be at war if they are to be different.
Men are pretty terrible people. They commit significantly more violent crimes, robberies and assaults each year than women do, according to the Department of Justice. They are more likely to show anger in the workplace and be rewarded for it while women are affected negatively for the same behaviors.
They also commit more of the suicides and there is a much greater stigma attached to male mental illness like depression (probably why all the suicide). Here’s a shocker: People with two different chromosome sets (XX and XY) tend to be different. In addition to the fact we start out genetically and physically different, we are raised different and our brains are wired differently — that’s why women are supposedly better at multi-tasking. These effete liberals always want to celebrate differences — race, sexual orientation, and so forth — but seem to think there is something inherently wrong with the genders being different. This is foolish.
They even take up too much space on public transportation when “manspreading”. I could keep going.
I’m sure you could. Try having large testicles. Sometimes they need some space.
They are still to blame even if they don’t know better, and it’s high time their dominant position – their entitled ignorance – was questioned and dismantled.
Can we use this same logic on ignorant liberals whose policies over the last seven years have been a complete disaster?
But manhood isn’t in crisis; it is the crisis.
Citation needed. I’m also going to skip over his diatribe about some random CNN guy calling for a re-education of men because it’s more of the same. But:
Until men en masse consider women to be part of the same ecosystem, masculinity will continue to be primarily a rejection of everything feminine, the tool men use to measure and gauge their own self-worth to other men – the foundation of bro culture.
And we have found the problem: He has an ill-informed view of masculinity. Bro culture is not masculinity, though some bros may be masculine. Masculinity is not a rejection of everything feminine — it is the complement. Masculinity and femininity are opposite sides of the same coin, not bitter enemies.
Masculinity is also not the tool men use to measure ourselves, it is but one of many. Men also use status: money, power. We use intelligence, which is separate from masculinity but plays a role in it. You can be a manly-man caveman, but without intelligence you are limited by what value your caveman abilities bring you. An intelligent man can find ways to rise up in other ways than just based on his masculinity.
And until then, when they feel that their masculinity is in jeopardy, when they don’t feel man enough, manly violence will seem like a reasonable way to react to their feelings.
Like most liberal arguments this is a piss-poor simplification of an issue. Men aren’t violent because they don’t feel manly. That’s absolutely stupid rubbish. If a crackhead robs a liquor store, is he committing that crime because he feels unmanly? No — he wants his next hit of crack, because crack is addictive. Bankers who commit fraud on the populace aren’t doing it to feel manly, they’re doing it to feed their avarice. Some rapists may do it out of a sense of power, but I’ve always held that there’s a significant number of men who do it because they’re just perverts.
Some murders may be a result of not feeling manly, maybe. Maybe if a man catches his wife cheating he kills her and the guy out of a sense of his manhood being insulted. But is a drive-by shooting done from a sense of powerlessness? No.
The problem is taking masculinity, because it’s a popular topic lately, and extrapolating it out to be this all-encompassing bogeyman. You can say that all crimes men commit are because they don’t feel masculine enough or they’re trying to become more masculine. But you can also do the same thing for crimes women commit and femininity, or any given race and tribalism. It’s stupid, horn-blowing rhetoric that is ignoring any real solution to a real problem.
All of this was humorously explored in the viral hashtag #MasculinitySoFragile, which through humor showed how men will respond so quickly, even violently, when they feel their manhood is being questioned. Which seems to happen a lot.
Yeah, trolling people for having a dick is humorous. Also, people didn’t react violently to a hashtag — they reacted through tweets, which cannot be violent unless we are allowing words to be considered violence now. That would be a tragic watering-down of the term violence, and would be a grave insult to victims of real violence. But that’s what liberals like to do lately: Water down terms (violence, rape, aggression), and diluting the seriousness with which real victims are treated because suddenly everyone is a victim. It’s akin to crying wolf, but instead they’re crying victimhood. At some point, do you know who is going to get tired of that and fight back?
Real victims of rape and violence. Because they’re going to realize you are using them for your own gain in a sick, pessimistic attempt to get attention and fame.
And yes: Men’s masculinity is questioned a lot. It’s the go-to insult in this society for men. So maybe masculinity isn’t a problem, but rather disdain for it and for the feelings of men?
Instead of constantly putting manhood under perceived threat, we must rethink the concept entirely, and maybe – to be so daring – throw it out. Because we have centuries of war, of pillaging, of violence that show us that manhood was never in crisis, but always was central to this mayhem. So we may need to just rebuild everything with the whole concept of manhood excluded.
We also have centuries of art, literature, and scientific progress made by men who, perhaps contrary to the Baby Boomer inspired nerds vs jocks worldview, were likely considered great examples of manhood by anyone with any sense. Is there violence in going to the moon? Because people consider those men to be masculine.
The Renaissance was powered by men, many of whom were masculine. The exploration of Antarctica. The space-race. Writings going back as far as history, paintings, musical works of art. While there were women contributing both directly (as artists and scientists themselves) and indirectly (as muses), there was still a significant contribution from masculinity.
Stop thinking of masculinity and femininity as being opposites at war. Think of them as being complementary ingredients in a rich life and culture.
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If you like manhood and masculinity, you’ll love The Boots Are Red
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