Posted on 07/12/2004 1:50:33 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
At the recent United Nations' Commission on the Status of Women, the focus was on the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality. The bottom line was clearly stated: We must nurture boys into developing more feminine characteristics -- gentleness, compassion and tenderness, among others -- and train them away from the more typically male aggressive and competitive behaviors.
Now, there is nothing wrong with masculine gentleness, compassion and tenderness. Likewise, there is nothing wrong with teaching boys to be kind, considerate and thoughtful. There is also nothing wrong with competitiveness or aggressiveness within bounds. For girls as well as boys, those qualities are essential for leadership and for achieving one's goals though, for Christians, they must be governed by appropriate motivation and exercised under the authority of Scripture.
And, there is definitely nothing wrong with masculinity (boys being boys and men being men) or with femininity (girls being girls and women being women).
Strangely but predictably, given the distorted visions of life in the post-modern era, there are those who advocate a blurring of the distinctions between masculinity and femininity. We are familiar with the radical feminists' attempts to teach girls to act like the guys. Now there is a concerted effort to mainstream the feminization of boys.
I spent the first 10 years of my life living near my grandparents and my father's four younger brothers. I heard dozens of tales about the escapades of those five Shaw brothers and, from the accounts, my dad and his brothers certainly fit the description of boys by one psychologist who called them "little aggression machines." The mischief of my dad and his brothers was tolerated (and often encouraged) by my grandfather; but he also established boundaries and meted out decisive punishment when the boys found ways to sneak around the rules. In the process of taming those troublemakers while cherishing their masculinity, my grandfather taught them how to become men. Each of the four older ones volunteered for service in WWII in different branches of the service, thus becoming members of the "greatest generation." These fine men illustrate that the liberals lie when they say that such boys will become abusive and controlling as adult men.
There is more and more research indicating that my father's and uncles' development, under the watchful eye and Godly guidance of my grandfather, was just "the way it's supposed to be" -- confirmed by the neurological patterns to the hormonal testing, from the psychological analyses to the behavioral studies. And a wide variety of authors are addressing the issue. James Dobson wrote Bringing Up Boys. Christina Hoff Sommers wrote The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men. Stephen Rhoads wrote the newly released and destined for best-seller status, Taking Sex Differences Seriously. The common theme of these books is that sex differences are hard-wired into human beings and that culture and nurturing have only minor influence on the development of those traits typically associated with masculinity and femininity.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that boys ought to be allowed to be boys, efforts to make little boys more "feminine" have become part of the national culture and accepted policy. Formal efforts can be traced from the passage in 1994 of the Gender Equity in Education Act. This legislation poured many hundreds of millions of dollars into efforts to end so-called bias against girls. Sadly, the "evidence" of bias was based on a study from the early 1980s. It was soundly discredited only after it had been widely accepted as fact and after having made headlines in the major media, creating a massive policy response that continues today. In spite of its blatant falsehoods, the "findings" of that long-ago flawed study are still part of "conventional wisdom."
Today, while many of the gender stereotypes that caused problems for girls are now reversed, the emphasis has swung so far in the opposite direction that we are seeing equal problems today for boys. As a consequence, boys are falling further and further behind girls in academic achievement, and more and more of them are growing up uncertain about how to express their masculinity. Tragically, this leaves many young women of the present generation who desire nothing so much as a husband and family without men who qualify.
Worse still is that the submerged but testosterone-fueled maleness of young boys - deprived of positive role models of disciplined, restrained manhood - can explode in the horrific ways they continually hear described in misogynist rap music and see vividly depicted in violent movies and on television. Little wonder that little boys who grow up without fathers turn into predatory males who women have good reason to fear and loathe.
Far from providing solutions to the problem of male aggressiveness through the proper socialization that has occurred for centuries in the bosom of marriage and family, the feminist vision, which goes completely against nature, is a recipe for disaster. Foolish feminism includes encouraging females to act like aggressive, promiscuous and uncommitted males, à la the popular television shows Sex in the City and Friends. At the same time, those same foolish feminists argue that women are not inherently vulnerable; they pretend that they don't have to protect themselves from the violence engendered among boys and men who have been raised without male socialization or role models.
All this would be laughable and absurd were it not for the disastrous effects produced in the United States and throughout the Western world as a consequence of this vision. It is being embraced as the normative ideal by so many educated but self-absorbed women.
They can't.
There are a lot of miracles a strong woman can work, but they can't overcome biology. A boy learns to be a man from men, not from women. And a strong woman knows that, and knows when to let go.
Boy Scouts taught me so much of what it means to be a decent man in this culture. I still try to live by the Boy Scout Oath, Law, Motto, and Slogan.
http://www.scouting.org/factsheets/02-503a.html
You can give your husband a pat on the back. Supposedly the Alpha males have GIRL children.
bump
Oh I LOVE your reply!!! I jsut love it. I too had dolls, teasets, pots and pans...mini ironing boards, little brooms and all that. Ruffles, lace, hair ribbons, etc. I can remember my mother telling me to be polite and to remember to say please and thank you like a little lady. I LOVE those memories and lessons from my dear mother. She was also TOUGH when she needed to be and would protect us all with her life if it came to that and woe be to the person that stepped between us and her.
My dad was very loving and kind and good to us. He was never mean or bullying. Yet, he was the one who was there for all of us and who would have then taken HIS place and stood between my mother and any person who would intend us harm. Woe be to that person again.
I TOO can kill bugs and even felt sad when our dog unearthed a mouse and her babies instead of running and screaming like a banchee.
Boys will and SHOULD be boys cause they are the men who are there later on when women DO scream like banchees.
Boys are the men who are there later when women really need them.
Boys are the men who will be there to hold a door for a woman.
Boys are the future men who will help a woman in distress and hold and comfort her when she is upset.
Boys are the future men who will beam with pride at the birth of their children.
I could go on and on as I know you could too.
These feminists movements are one big joke. Just a bitter group wanting to force their agenda on everyone. Maybe they don't have kind gentle loving men in their liveswho are also tough, masculine and brave as well. I don't know what their problem is that they have such a hard time accepting boys/men as they were created. I'll take a rough and tumble little boy anytime as this is what prepares him for his future as the protector of his family. And...I'll take a polite little young lady who also knows how to nurture, love and raise her children the way they should be raised.
So, Parents: Raise your sons to be men and your daughters to be ladies. You won't be sorry and neither will they.
Well, of course! You need a shelf for that blanket and he needs a blanket for the shelf (otherwise it'll just covered with orphaned sockets).
Are you part of the FReeper family table discussion group on Fridays? You have a great question about raising boys and someone there may help.
Let me tell you though. I have a nephew who came to live with myself, his mom and my mom and my dad when he was three. My dad died four months later. He was totally surrounded by women for the majority of his life. He now has a wife and three boys. He works two jobs so she can homeschool. He attributes that work ethic to the strong women around him and his Grandpa's memory that stuck with him.
Your husband may not be around as much as you would like, but a father being in the picture is the best thing that could happen to a child. (even a Grandpa can be a great dad)
My grandma lived in SE New Mexico and she had a Lila tree in her front yard (sorry I don't know the name in English or even if that is how it is spelled). We used to always get in lila fights with our cousins when we went to visit. They weren't good for much else--hard little cranberry sized fruit, always green. Left a nice welt if you threw it hard enough.
You are a good and wise mother and your children will always and forever love and respect you for your strength and for your guidance. We need more out there like you. Keep up the good work.
Here is a case in point. I was in the Aldi's the other day. This is about the only place where I learn just what is going down in today's world, as I no longer frequent places which serve adult beverages. There were a couple of fairly long lines when all of a sudden everyone hears a ruckus towards the front of the line that I was not in. A unkempt overweight white woman was cussing up a storm towards the man who had the cart behind her.
What set her off I do not know but I do know that she was thoroughly enjoying having the stage which the two lines waiting to check out provided. And I do know that man who her verbal attack was aimed at never said a word to her after the distubance got my attention. Her husband or her significant other was quietly unloading the groceries while she was performing. He was thinner and better groomed and did not look like he belonged with her if your eyes did not tell you different. In a loud boasting voice she told the object of her venom that she ate pieces of **** like him for breakfast and **** them out before noon. She also managed to use the f word several times. After the two or three minutes that I heard, the object of her venom pulled his cart out of line and left it in a aisle and walked out of the store.
What precipitated this verbal barrage I do not know nor did anyone else in the store that I knew of. No one said anything but I told the four or five people in my line that she was obviously suffering from testosterone overload. My remark got nervous laughter because the people in line looked at me as if I was as crazy as this woman for speaking my thoughts out loud. In the nanny state we should avoid confrontation and anything which could precipitate it.
I am an aging boomer, and from my background,in most places that I have ever been such an exchange would have been between two men and physical blows would have been exchanged.
But in the nanny state we have been taught it is not nice to hit. Had this exchange been between two students in our decaying public school system, both parties would probably have been required to go to mediation whatever that is, overseen by some female counselor.
From my point of view she was taking advantage of the fact that she was a female, and in our sick society, if you want to play the vulgar fool and verbally abuse someone whom I believed to be a stranger to her, then you get a free pass and their are no penalties imposed by society at large or the individual who was abused. Had he smacked her in her ugly dirty face which she deserved, then she would have had him arrested and sued him if he had anything to sue for.
We need some John-John hugging pics pls.
>>You can give your husband a pat on the back. Supposedly the Alpha males have GIRL children<<
That's amazing!!!!! I'll have to tell his smarmy brother too (who had two boys, I might add).
Doggone right. The male has the instinct to protect and defend and protect and defend he should.
But we also need people on the unit committee, handling the treasury or the publicity, buying the badges and keeping track of who's got what advancements, getting newsletters out to the parents, calling the State Parks or the other places we go camping to reserve sites and all that, and all the other committee jobs.
Then there's the short-term committments; organizing the annual pancake breakfast or Christmas wreath sale. In any case, call your local Boy Scout Council (generally in the yellow pages, or go to the BSA web site and put your zip code in the Council locator) and find out where the local Troops or Packs are. 1st through 5th grade is Cub Scouts, 6th (or 11 years old) through 12th grade is Boy Scouts.
And if you really like the Boy Scout kind of program, and any of your girls are 14 years old or in High School, they can join Venturing, which is co-ed.
This is such drivel. Our nation is too feminized as it is. We as a nation has spent so much time exploring its "softer side"; we've forgotten how to be hard. Do you think, for example, if Al Qaeda had attacked Ancient Sparta or any part of Ancient Greece, or Ancient Rome, or even World War II America, there would be all this naval-gazing, hand-wringing, or discussions about how "it's all our fault?" I think not.
LOL I hope your girls' birth weight was high, as well. He can tell his brother that "his is bigger" ; )
The sad thing is, no one seems to think a man can have all these qualities.
He can be gentle, compassionate and tender with his family, friends and those in need, but aggressive toward those who threaten his family, his home, his country. He can be competitive in sports and in the workplace, but not to the point of being sneaky, dishonest or simply no fun to play a game with.
Moral relativism reigns.
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