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A Good Man Is Still Hard to Find
Townhall.com ^ | April 6, 2018 | Suzanne Fields

Posted on 04/06/2018 7:07:09 AM PDT by Kaslin

Women have been complaining since the original Adams family was evicted from the Garden of Eden that "A good man is hard to find." Despite radical feminist mockery of the very idea of manliness, that men are natural sexual predators, most women -- with very few exceptions -- still want one.

The #MeToo movement has nevertheless changed a lot of things in the wake of the sexual harassment-scandal season. One of them is the regard in which men are universally held by women. It often seems we're back to the '80s, when there was a similar assault on the idea of manhood and some women decried all sex as rape.

Radical feminist activists Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin were widely credited with saying that "all sex is rape" and "all men are rapists." They both deny the statements, but Dworkin conceded that she did say, "Penetrative intercourse is, by its nature, violent." We hear versions of the sentiment in #MeToo accounts of women talking about their encounters with boorish men.

One recent essay in The New York Times was titled "The Unexamined Brutality of the Male Libido." The headline, at least, was wrong. If there's one phenomenon that has not been "unexamined" in America over these past many months since Harvey Weinstein was exposed as the monster in every woman's bad dreams, it's the male libido. It has been endlessly examined, dissected, scorned and denounced.

Sebastian Junger, in a perceptive op-ed in National Review magazine, recalls how a friend once told him: "(B)eing a man meant two things: taking care of your loved ones and burying your dead. Everything flows from that."

Many men, encouraged by the culture, share more economic and child care responsibilities with women. But a natural protectiveness still emerges in violent situations, and women have been known to cherish and celebrate it.

"The definition of a man," says anthropologist Joyce Benson, "is someone you can count on when the enemy comes." Throughout history, men have demonstrated they are willing to put the safety of others above their own, usually their wives and children, but sometimes strangers. This is a male instinct that often emerges at an early age.

When a gunman killed 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012, four of the slain were young men who shielded women with their own bodies. The female species instinctively understands (and appreciates) that instinct. A British experiment in 2015 found that when women looked at photographs of men, they consistently chose men with combat medals as the more attractive. In a different study, women were attracted to men with facial scars.

Harvey Mansfield, a professor at Harvard and author of a book titled "Manliness," thinks it's hardly a coincidence that a "raw type of manliness" emerged in politics with the discounting of manliness. He notes provocatively that President Donald Trump has a raw manliness, such as that found in Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, "who are rough and gross and discourteous."

Raw manliness, he tells Tunku Varadarajan in The Wall Street Journal, is an invitation to the vulgar, and Trump's supporters "rather like and appreciate his vulgarity and his baseness, his impulsiveness." If women don't like the vulgarity, the crude and the rude, there are many women who nevertheless seem to appreciate the punching back against politically correct assumptions of manhood overly tamed.

Professor Mansfield echoes others' observations that Trump's unexpected triumph was not born of racial reaction to former President Barack Obama but of a backlash in favor of manliness. Obama was a scold who offered reproof with a voice couched in the refined cadences of the parlor, and Trump speaks with the uninhibited voice of the construction site, where rough talk is the lingua franca. Gender neutrality, seeking to erase all differences between men and women, is scorned.

Obama championed an America that "wouldn't throw its weight around," and this demonstrated a hostility toward manliness. Varadarajan writes: "Mansfield says that ... the president has little propensity for abstraction or intellectual complication. 'But he's shrewd. He saw that there was a way to be appealing, and to knock off the competition of his rivals in the Republican Party, by a display of manliness and an attack on political correctness." The throwback in politics drew on old macho stereotypes that appealed to men and women who found the feminist bravado of Hillary Clinton abrasive.

The good news, as Mansfield sees it, is that the steady march of gender neutrality is slowing. The change is not always pretty. Neither are manly men -- sometimes ribald, often roughly cut and ornery. But they can usually be tamed over time. Let's hope.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: fakephilosophy; incoherence; marriage; meanderingdrivel; men; relationships; women
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To: Hyman Roth

.
>> “A good woman is hard to find. I am still looking.” <<

I found mine 30 years ago!
.


81 posted on 04/06/2018 10:27:38 AM PDT by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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To: Spok

.
BS!
.


82 posted on 04/06/2018 10:30:11 AM PDT by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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To: Elsie
Teed myself up for that one didn't I!😂 I have a rejoinder but will keep it to myself ...for now!
83 posted on 04/06/2018 10:46:19 AM PDT by Bonemaker (invictus maneo)
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To: Kaslin

What do we want? All most of us want is to be treated with love and tenderness, and shown a little appreciation...more important than looks or money will ever be.


84 posted on 04/06/2018 10:46:33 AM PDT by patriot08 ( Check out my Texas page! (in my bio))
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To: Bonemaker

Penetrative incourse does NOT have to be violent. Who is kidding whom here?

Have we grown so crass as to not understand there are many way to have penetrative intercourse? And the result can range from a very thoughtful denouement of grateful and welcoming shared love to just plain fun.

For heaven’s sake. There is nothing wrong with an obviously emotionally strong, physically and mentally, man with opinions. Well, you know exactly what I mean.


85 posted on 04/06/2018 10:48:29 AM PDT by Bodega (we are developing less and less common sense...world wide)
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To: Larry Lucido; Kaslin; SaveFerris

86 posted on 04/06/2018 10:50:29 AM PDT by Gamecock (In church today, we so often find we meet only the same old world, not Christ and His Kingdom. AS)
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To: MrEdd
In before the Mae West quote.

#seemetoo

87 posted on 04/06/2018 10:54:49 AM PDT by Fightin Whitey
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To: Elsie

LOL! Glad you liked it.


88 posted on 04/06/2018 11:00:20 AM PDT by Sergio (An object at rest cannot be stopped! - The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight)
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To: Kaslin

Read, read, read. Prioritized, non fiction.

The more knowledge you sponge up the better person you become. Online, such as, Wikipedia does not solely make you a better person, books do. Write all over them.

You are not looking for a good man or a good woman.
They do not exist.
People are fundamentally dysfunctional.
The books better take care of that.

You are looking for relationships.
Improving, selecting, choosing, risking.

The better person you are, the better you can manage other’s imperfections. Then poof, there is that good man or that good woman. Life is the journey.


89 posted on 04/06/2018 11:03:34 AM PDT by TheNext
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To: Kaslin
A link to the Sebastian Junger column for anyone else interested, a fascinating, thought-provoking read...

The Anthropology of Manhood

90 posted on 04/06/2018 11:08:33 AM PDT by mewzilla (Has the FBI been spying on members of Congress?)
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To: drwoof
"Shoes. They want shoes."

And when they're given shoes, they still complain:


91 posted on 04/06/2018 11:14:37 AM PDT by PLMerite ("They say that we were Cold Warriors. Yes, and a bloody good show, too." - Robert Conquest)
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To: Kaslin

The female imperative mindset has been thrust on our society and its not helpful for men, society, or relationships.


92 posted on 04/06/2018 11:18:43 AM PDT by KC_Conspirator
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To: punknpuss

I hate to burst your bubble but smart strong women are the traditional mothers of the strong men created in this country for the past 242 years.

According to your convoluted theory women who are feminine, virtuous, good cooks, keep a clean home and care for their children are dumb, weak, boring doormats. You might want to rethink that. :-)


93 posted on 04/06/2018 11:19:41 AM PDT by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose of a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped)
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To: Wyrd bið ful aræd

Strong men feel comfortable in their own skin. They don’t dislike or fear or worse resent women. Same goes for strong women.

The feminist movement is made up of a bunch of weak whiny women who don’t have the backbone to just go out there and compete and make it on their own. They are resented by weak whiny men with the same problem. :-)


94 posted on 04/06/2018 11:27:59 AM PDT by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose of a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped)
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To: Georgia Girl 2

The feminist movement has gone from a movement to a mindset which, unfortunately, a majority of American women subscribe to. It permeates society. I think many men, especially strong men, resent that society has become utterly feminized. Men are penalized for being masculine at work, at leisure, in society in general. Young boys are medicated for being boys. As I said upthread, even the military combat arms are being forcibly gender integrated. Men are being told explicitly and implicitly by society that there is no place for them or their instinctive skills, there is no task that is theirs alone to shoulder, even in instances like police or military where anyone with two iotas of common sense to rub together can see should be reserved to men. I think strong men in particular are acutely aware of this, and acutely resentful of this.


95 posted on 04/06/2018 12:12:58 PM PDT by Wyrd bið ful aræd (Flag burners can go screw -- I'm mighty PROUD of that ragged old flag)
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To: Georgia Girl 2
You are not wrong there. Half the genes come from mom and you aren't going to get a decent fighting force from floofy little doormats. At best you will get:


96 posted on 04/06/2018 12:36:13 PM PDT by BlackAdderess (MAGA!)
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To: Georgia Girl 2
Whoever is trying to disarm us is also trying to make us all floofy and French. Personally, I blame Brussels...


97 posted on 04/06/2018 1:00:53 PM PDT by BlackAdderess (MAGA!)
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To: Georgia Girl 2

My theory is not convoluted but your thinking is. A woman can be a woman as God designed her and still be strong and raise confident young men and women. Women can be sassy and smart asses but that doesn’t make them right or appealing or strong.

Look at America’s history since WWII and the 60’s cultural revolution, and tell me how much safer and stronger our nation has become. Boys and girls don’t even understand the basic biology that there are only two sexes. A child can attend school for 13 years and still not learn to read. Mothers dump their kids in daycare so they don’t have to care for them because childcare is hard work. I daresay that more men know how to cook than women these days. We have 17 year old punks calling our elected officials “bitches” and no one gives them a correction. 54 million babies have been aborted over the past 45 years. Criminals pour over our borders unchecked. The percent of all births to unmarried women is 39.8%. So how is it that our world has improved given that so many women like to think of themselves as smart, sassy and strong?


98 posted on 04/06/2018 1:01:36 PM PDT by punknpuss
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To: I want the USA back

An accurate summarization of the problem from my perspective.


99 posted on 04/06/2018 1:03:47 PM PDT by usconservative (When The Ballot Box No Longer Counts, The Ammunition Box Does. (What's In Your Ammo Box?))
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To: Kaslin

the way most women are today?? they wouldnt know a good guy if he came up and paddled her ass cherry red. I was blindsideed with a divorce 10 years ago. since then I’ve tried dating a half dozen times and they ALL were under the same thinking the ex had... they could act ANY way the wanted and it was okay, but you had to tow the line... Bullshit!! I’ll stay single and contemplate everytime I open the door for a woman, and she doesnt even say thankyou, reaching over and grabbing her hair and pulling her back out the door and wwalk in ahead of her.

Sorry to you select few ladies who read this who are level headed... but your peers have created something thats not going away anytime soon... I just am growing tires of hearing how victimized todays women are by us.


100 posted on 04/06/2018 1:18:45 PM PDT by sit-rep
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