Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 40 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
It ain’t Toxic.
The beginning of this essay should start at the beginning. For almost all of human history, societies have been governed by men, and those societies did not treat women as political equals. For almost all of human history, cultures have been dominated by men, and most such cultures condoned individual men dominating individual women. Needless to say, almost any complaint or criticism feminists wish to hurl at men has plenty of historical validity.
Modern feminism began over 50 years ago. My beef with feminists is that they refuse to acknowledge they won. Discrimination against women is extinct in America. In fact, the opposite is now true. (But this essay is not going to complain about that for a reason given below.) “You go, girl!” has been the universal anthem of our times for decades.
The subject of this essay is not the current condition of men and women in America. The subject is the future condition of masculinity in America.
Traditional masculinity includes an instinct to protect and provide for the family. That is our role. That is why we exist. That is what makes us happy.
Traditional masculinity includes fully valuing both economic and non-economic contributions to the family by others. Traditional masculinity views marriage as a full, equal partnership regardless of economics.
Traditional masculinity includes Never Hit a Woman. It also includes a duty to protect women and children generally.
Traditional masculinity includes Big Boys Don’t Cry which also means Big Men don’t whine and complain. To “man up” means to shut up and do your job. In today’s jargon it means Real Men refuse to be a victim even when they have been victimized.
Traditional masculinity includes not seeking praise for doing your duty. Any praise beyond the occasional “Good Job” makes Real Men uncomfortable. Real Men do their best for internal reasons, not external reasons.
Traditional masculinity includes an inner drive to compete. Sometimes the competition has clear rules with easily identified winners and losers. Sometimes not. If there is no opponent available, we’ll challenge ourselves. Real Men despise participation trophies. Winners get the prize. Losers get the satisfaction of competing.
Traditional masculinity includes Don’t Cheat. If there are rules, follow them. If no rules, compete with honor. Real Men can trust other Real Men.
Traditional masculinity includes individualism. Teamwork is required in certain sports and warfare. Otherwise, Real Men prefer to be judged as individuals and not as part of a group. Failure is an individual failure. Own it. Learn from it. Blame no one, and move on. Real Men want no part of other people’s success. They want earned success, not freeloaders’ success.
Traditional masculinity values results, not effort, and not intentions. Real Men don’t make excuses for failure, and they don’t expect to get rewarded for trying. Real Men understand that both good luck and bad luck are real and that results are not always fair. That’s life.
Modern Masculinity has zero problems with women having 100% political and social equality. When it comes to economic equality, however, modern men want all economic success to be earned. Therefore, men are in favor of equal pay for equal work and equal pay for equal results. Real Men are not okay with equal pay because of fairness.
So, the question asked in this essay is this: Does modern society consider any of the above “toxic”? If so, what parts? Why? Please explain. Do all men honor all the above all the time? No. Does that discredit masculinity itself? No.
Before anyone makes their list of bad things they think stem from traditional masculinity, here is my short list of good things I think stem from traditional masculinity: everything.
G-Pub
PS: Nothing in this essay purports to give advice to men or women regarding their personal relationships with each other. This postscript, however, is going to close with a little bit of snark in that regard. First, polls show that all the appropriate feminist gains over the last 50 years have not resulted in an increase in happiness among women. Second, the amount of truth in the following joke is underappreciated. These days, some define modern feminism as unhappy women lecturing happy women that they are doing it wrong.
PPS: I will permit Democrats to pretend they wrote this essay for a lot less than $20 million.
Published in Feminism
I think I understand the point of what you are saying and I agree. It’s not easy to express this in words without going astray and creating openings that allow or encourage someone to say you missed something or you got it wrong. I like your words and your intent and find no fault.
I think you got it exactly right. I had written my views on feminism a while back. I also feel the war is over and we can lay down our arms and celebrate and appreciate the differences between men and women. The attempts now to go farther and obliterate differences between the sexes are destructive to both men and women. They lead to grievance and unhappiness instead of love and partnership. Modern feminism seems to celebrate when women adopt the worst excesses of men rather than their best ideals, all of which you articulate above.
The pendulum swings. I just wish people, especially educators, would stop shoving it and let it settle down in the minimally messy middle.
A couple of my friends* made these two Comments:
and
They express my thoughts perfectly.
The first one is especially appealing: it is eloquent to the point of poetry. Makes me want to memorize it and use it when needed.
*Sorry, I can’t remember their names.
[TAGS: Serious comments except for one attempt at Humour, in the last sentence.]
Great post!
Ditto.
What a great post. Thank you so much.
Reading your list of “Traditional masculinity means…” paragraphs, one after the other, I was thinking to myself, “He’s describing Western Civilization, with a dash of ‘stiff upper lip’ English culture.” Read it again with that in mind, and see if you agree.
Which may be why some feminists are so openly critical of Western Civilization. They understand what they’re really trying to destroy. It’s not just men.
Maybe. What do I know. For the millionth time, I really don’t understand leftists.
To try to answer some of these, as I understand the arguments (I am trying to minimize sarcasm):
Competition is inherently bad (“toxic”) because someone, even yourself, will come up short (the “loser”), which will cause that someone to feel bad. It is wrong to create any circumstance in which someone will feel bad about something. So, competition is bad (“toxic”).
Individualism is inherently bad (“toxic”) because the group is the important unit. Maintaining group cohesion is paramount to group success. Promoting the individual leads to competition within the group (see above), damaging or destroying group cohesion. Since individualism damages group cohesion, individualism is toxic.
Valuing results over intentions and effort is wrong because too many factors beyond the control of anyone in the group go into producing results. Too much randomness. Not producing results will cause people to feel bad, so valuing results leads people to feel bad for things that are likely beyond their control. And allowing people to feel bad is wrong. So valuing results over intentions and effort is “toxic.”
One more. Valuing your family over the broader “family” of all humanity is selfish. You should value all of humanity at least as much as your immediate blood relations. So an instinct to provide for blood relations before providing for all of humanity is wrong and toxic to the maintenance of a global human “family.”
On a more supportive note, ever since I first saw it, I appreciated the order of things illustrated by an Associated Press photo in the wake of Hurricane Harvey (2017) that shows a mother clutching her baby and a large man carrying them both through the floodwaters. The woman nurturing and providing for the most vulnerable of humans (a baby), and a Real Man protecting them both.
Per the source (ABC13 Houston),
Houston Police SWAT officer Daryl Hudeck carries Catherine Pham and her 13-month-old son Aiden after rescuing them from their home surrounded by floodwaters.AP Photo/David J. Phillip
[Dupe deleted]
It reminds me of Rose Castorini’s question, “Why do men chase women?”
It’s like…
Rose Castorini: But why would a Leftist consistently act like he was trying to destroy Western Civilization?
I mean, consistently, going back to Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men in 1755, and on through The Terror, and Marx, Lenin and Stalin, and Woodrow Wilson and Lord Keynes’s Cambridge Apostles and FDR and Mao and Pol Pot and the Black Panthers and Students for a Democratic Society and Saul Alinsky and Bernadine Dorhn and the Midwest Academy and their star community organizer/POTUS Barack Obama?
Johnny Castorini: I don’t know. Maybe he seeks to destroy Western Civilization.
Rose Castorini: That’s it! That’s the reason!
Johnny Cammareri: I don’t know…
Rose Castorini: No! That’s it! Thank you! Thank you for answering my question!
Recognizing the sarcasm, I will try to provide the true benefit from masculinity:
Competition is how we get increased productivity and economic growth and the losers frequently become winners from a learning process.
Individualism breeds diversity of thought and overcomes groupthink. It is required in Christianity for a person to take Christ as Redeemer and Savior.
To live, results are required.
The larger, more… existential?… problem with feminism and feminists, is failing to recognize that even feminism requires men. If men decided not to allow feminism, it wouldn’t exist. And women would be incapable of doing it on their own.
Frankly, women who want to be feminist, etc, should be appreciative that men allow it. IF they allow it. And in many parts of the world, they don’t. The question of whether those places might actually be better off, is of some debate.
Look at this: Via Middle East Eye
I have been assured that toxic masculinity involves virtues to a fault, such as internalizing pain or emotions to the point that you don’t seek medical attention when you need to or get to the point where you lash out for a picayune thing rather than address your main stressors*.
Doubtless some people use the phrase in good faith. But generally it is connected to criticism of men and the femininization of boys.
_____________________
*AKA the human condition.
Robert Burns, 1785:
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Ending systemic discrimination against women (assuming such ever existed, which it didn’t) isn’t what the feminists think of as winning. They’re committed to winning, which means uncontested rule of their whim.
Should a person fully understand crazy people, it might be because that individual is crazy themself.
I realize the following experience with Leftists is exasperating. I’m just not sure why the average person who is a Lefty would want to play at this game:
Yes, it could be that he’s crazy themself. If so, I hope themself seeks counseling.
;-)
I have been working on coming up with pithy little factual statement I can introduce into a conversation with leftists, without heat or hostility, as food for thought. Like this one:
When women were encouraged to leave the home and enter the workforce, the results of their labor could be taxed. So can the earnings of those who do the work that a homemaker used to do for “free.” Motherhood can’t be taxed; Daycare can be.
Comedian Bill Burr does a routine called “No Reason to Hit a Woman.” His take is that there are plenty of reasons to hit a woman, but we [men] just don’t do it. His use of humor to get his point across is brilliant. I can’t find the best clip, but this one is pretty good (strong language warning!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rksKvZoUCPQ&t=37s
Maybe we should be looking for a way to support community and governing needs without taxing personal labor. Remember life, liberty, and property. The product of personal labor is the resulting income and the basis of our taxing at the federal level.
Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing dtheirs and blaming it on you,
[fifteen more stanzas defining manhood]
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Unfortunately, whichever category of valuation Government taxes:
…it will deprive us of a measure of our lives, our liberty, and our property, in proportion to the valuation of what it confiscates.
Whether or not it taxes the valuation of Income from personal labor!
Our responsibility is to choose how we wish to have our sacrifice distributed amongst us, and in what total amount.
We have a Constitution from which it has been held that individuals have rights that include ownership of the products of their labor. How do we apply such an ownership concept to real estate, i.e. LAND, which is another source of taxation not appearing in you list?
That’s a good depiction pf possible sources. I would choose the transfers that occur in commerce as a an appropriate source of taxation to support government since this is very well connected to the public service to be rendered. Tariffs, sales, and land and natural resource use for commercial production are good examples.
Probably the wrong thread for this.
In accordance with our legal and moral and Christian traditions inherited from Britain, our Constitution allows the Federal Government to impair our individual natural right to ownership of the products of our labor, subject to rules, procedures, and a structure by which the authors sought to constrain that frightful power. Constraints Including election of our Government officials, and the Separation of Powers.
I took care to list every source of taxation in the list.
Land is a subcategory of Capital, along with Inventories, Fixed Capital, non-produced non-financial capital such as Patents, and Valuables such as artworks and Non-monetary gold.
I agree that land can be capital. Isn’t it’s status as such created by government, I mean in the sense of specific ownership and rights to transfer title? I’ve even seen reports recently discussing squatters’ rights when occupying real property. Can a person own real property without government?
And in order to have the personal income tax the 16th Amendment to the original Constitution and Bill of Rights was required.