Tuesday, August 01, 2017

A Suspicious Inversion

It’s been a few years but this guy still grinds my gears, and since he’s quite literally the poster boy for a generation — or at least for the last administration — there is a problem with that, and I hope we can see it.

Now, to be fair, nobody wants to marry a guy who resolves domestic quarrels with a fist to the face. At least, nobody normal and emotionally healthy does. But be honest here: how many women truly want to partner up with a man who possesses neither the will nor the physical strength to act in a crisis?

That’s a different question, isn’t it. This guy is all that in spades.

If you need a catty retort, he’s right there stirring his half-fat Iced Smoked Butterscotch Latte and arching an ironic eyebrow. But if you need something lifted, analyzed or resolved — or if you ever need to be directed, defended, protected or stood up for — well, better look elsewhere. Not to mention he’s probably unemployed if he’s still sitting around in his onesie at this time of the day.

And heaven help you if you ever need someone forcibly evicted.

Toxic Masculinity on the Wane

Some feminists are all for purging society of the very last vestiges of what is now called “toxic masculinity”, right down to dictating how men sit when using public transit. They figure so long as their peers subject them to sufficient reeducation, backed by legislation, shaming and perpetual hectoring, society’s few remaining non-compliant males will eventually modify their behavior to suit the purposes of the cultural reformers.

Other social engineers are more cautious, preferring not to toss the baby out with the bathwater. Male feminist Paul Hartzer writes:
“The desired endpoint may be to get rid of anatomy-based distinctions entirely, and allowing everyone to choose the social roles and identity best suited to themselves. We can keep the best aspects of ‘traditional masculinity,’ such as leadership, strength of purpose, protectiveness, and a willingness to do what’s right despite its emotional cost, while not equating that model with anatomical men.”
Hey, in a world in which we are nothing more than trained apes and gender is merely an evolved social construct, Mr. Hartzer’s plan might be peachy.

The Much-Maligned Genesis Model

But suppose we actually live in a world in which one sex was designed from the ground up by God to have a greater innate capacity and a more natural affinity for things like leadership, strength of purpose, protectiveness and a willingness to do what’s right despite its emotional (and sometimes physical) cost?

I suspect this is one reason Adam is assigned moral responsibility for the fall of mankind, not Eve. “Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin,” the apostle Paul declares.

Adam was guilty in a way Eve was not. Eve may have started the ball rolling with the serpent, and she may have capitulated to temptation first, but the moral disaster that befell our race was not complete until the federal head of humanity had weighed in and been found wanting. Ultimately it was Adam’s failure to lead that brought the whole thing crashing down.

The distinctions between male and female go back to our creation as well. To the Corinthians, Paul puts it this way:
Man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.”
Woman FROM man. Woman FOR man. Not two simultaneously-evolving otherwise-identical members of the same species, but two beings specifically created with different and complementary purposes in view.

Square Pegs into Round Holes

Now, believe this or don’t, but if it turns out the Bible’s account is the one that most closely accords with observable reality; that gender expression is not a product of evolution but a built-in design feature; then our society is currently engaged in an exercise in futility and ultimately, in pursuing its own immolation. It is trying to ram square pegs into round holes by asking women to do things for which all but a few are not remotely equipped, while actively encouraging men to slough off responsibilities for which most of them are.

Further, the moment we tell men things like leadership are optional rather than expected, we stop training boys to be what they were designed to be, leaving us with a generation of young men who have had all useful ways of expressing their normal, God-designed masculinity either completely closed off to them or at very least rendered mysterious, arcane and perpetually out of reach.

Major mistake.

The Downside of Sensitive Maleness

But back to my original question: no woman wants to deal with a husband who solves every problem with a fist to the face. But any society in which boys are sensitivity-trained and culturally browbeaten from birth into a state of weeping paralysis at the very thought of physical conflict is a society at risk of having nobody capable of standing up for it when push comes to shove. This is precisely what we’re seeing on college campuses in protest video after protest video: men who are easily triggered, need their safe spaces, and are absolutely worthless at anything traditionally male. They are passive victims, not moral agents.

Moreover, all this “choose your social role and identity” stuff works fine in theory, but anyone who actually pays attention to how men and women still relate in the real world knows that even modern, “strong” women quickly come to despise men who have chosen to develop their nurturing side at the cost of their masculinity. They may initially be quite content to use such men to raise their kids as they rush off to further their careers, but they hurl their partners under the bus with even greater enthusiasm and a spate of perfectly plausible rationalizations the moment they see an opportunity to trade up. And who can blame them? With very few exceptions, men who aspire to the role of homemakers and helpmates will never be anything more than second-rate women. Why not just hire a first-rate woman instead?

What women really want (and NEED, I suspect) is not men who can’t hit them, or men who are too scared of the system to hit them, but men who choose not to, whatever the provocation. Not partners whose masculinity has been propagandized right out of them, but real men whose masculinity is voluntarily and consistently managed by means of obedience to the word of God. Not men whose exposure to real male role models has been so comprehensively interfered-with that they have no clue how they ought to behave, but men who know who they are at the core, and know how to most effectively express their maleness for the benefit of family, friends and society.

Thing is, a feminized society can’t create those kinds of men. It doesn’t know how.

So it creates Pajama Boys instead.

Heading Pajama Boy Off at the Pass

Is it too obvious to say … let’s not imitate that? Let’s teach our sons to love their wives like Christ loved the church: sacrificially ministering to them tirelessly without becoming their doormats. I suspect the head of the wife should cave to the emotional whims of his partner approximately as frequently as the Head of the Church capitulates reluctantly to his. Let’s teach our sons to take full responsibility for their own actions — by which I do mean THEIR actions, not the alleged excesses of the “patriarchy”. Let’s teach our sons to really lead, a role that may not involve running every proposed plan past each of their wives first for approval.

And — don’t bite my head off here, but if you do, then at least think about it later — let’s teach our daughters to graciously submit to such men, for it is only with the enthusiastic buy-in of godly women that their men will be able to accomplish anything for them and their families in the first place. And for those of our daughters who won’t buy in to the teaching of scripture, and who want to remold their homes and churches in the mode of the world? Let’s wish them gracious and loving godspeed as we point them in the direction of the many, many thoroughly compromised denominations where they will be free to act out the role of men on the platform and in the home, and even be cheered on for doing it.

Because if we don’t get behind that last part, one day we won’t be listening to sermons from Pajama Boy on Sunday mornings.

We’ll be listening to his wife.

2 comments :

  1. Have you heard of this guy? John Horvat thinks that liberals are loosing the battle because of lack of commitment, enthusiasm replaced by rowdiness and not having any significant ideas to focus on. He may have a point.

    http://www.returntoorder.org/2017/07/liberals-trouble-know/

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    Replies
    1. I haven't heard of him, but I tend to agree with most of that analysis you've linked to.

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