Men Behaving Badly - Why?

MND ^ | July 15, 2003 | Karl Glasson, Ph.D.

[Nick Danger]

Many males in western societies seem to be behaving very badly these days.

They seem to be becoming more involved with crime. They seem to be growing more dishonest. They seem to be increasingly hostile and aggressive toward others. They seem less committed to their partners and to their families. They are clearly doing less well in terms of their education. And they seem to be more pre-occupied with their own narrow self-interests than they used to be.

Why is this so?

What can possibly account for this apparent deterioration in the behaviours of western men?

Have their genes suddenly taken a dive for the worse?

Or are they simply responding to the way in which western societies treat them these days?

In my view, the major cause of what seems to be a significant deterioration in the behaviours of men is, quite simply, feminism.

Indeed, the evidence that damns feminism is overwhelming. 

The evidence shows that feminism is not only the primary cultural cause of the current-day bad behaviours of men, it is also the primary cultural cause of very many other current-day serious societal problems.

Before demonstrating to readers how it is that feminism is largely responsible for the current bad behaviours of men, it is important to understand the two following points.

1. Feminism - together with political correctness - has been the most influential ideology in western societies for the past three decades. There are no other ideologies that even come to it in terms of the extent to which it has penetrated western societies. 

Feminism has penetrated very deeply western governments, western laws, western social services, western universities, western colleges, western schools, western media, western families, western bedrooms and western minds.

And it has done so for three decades - a decade longer than even Hitler had - with far fewer resources - in which to stir up his mass hatred toward the Jews.

Feminism has been hugely influential.

And one of its main successes has been the wholesale demonisation of males.

2. Political correctness has been aggressively supported and strongly buttressed by feminists. Indeed, feminists have done their level best to promote any activity which undermines men - particularly white heterosexual ones. 

And political correctness has been a very useful weapon for them in this respect.

But the point here is this. 

Every ill that can be blamed on political correctness, can also be blamed on those who endorse and underpin it. And no group has done more to foist political correctness on to western societies than the feminists.

For three decades, the feminists and the politically correct have engaged in a wholesale onslaught against white heterosexual men.

White men have been persistently accused of being racist by highly vocal racial activists and racial minorities, and their history and their forefathers have been thoroughly undermined and blackened - to the extent that many racial activists are now demanding reparations for past slavery.

Heterosexual men have been continually portrayed as being violent, abusive, oppressors of women by mainstream feminists and a whole plethora of abuse professionals who have a vested interest in portraying men in this way.

Heterosexual men have also been represented by the beautifully orchestrated gay lobby as being bigoted and fearful of their own sexuality.

All men have been assaulted almost ceaselessly by various women's groups, children's groups, social service workers, therapists and analysts who have sought to indoctrinate the population with the view that men are abusers of children.

The ubiquitous feminist-fearing mainstream media have consistently sought to demonise and humiliate the entire male gender - a typical example of which can be seen in the recent vindictive column by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times entitled Incredible Shrinking Y.

And the all-powerful western governments together with the legal profession have almost disempowered men completely when it comes to their families, their relationships and their homes, on the grounds that women and children are often better off without them. (The Federal Bureau of Marriage? by Professor Stephen Baskerville gives a good insight into how this is being achieved.)

In view of all this, is it surprising to find that men are behaving badly?

If A keeps telling B that he considers him to be worthless, and continues to accuse him of things that he has not done, and persistently undermines him in relation to his family and to his children, and continually seeks to portray him as an abuser and an oppressor, who should be surprised if B finally turns his back on A?

Indeed, who should be surprised if B decides to give A a bloody nose?

Well. This is the kind of thing that has been going on in western societies for a long time now thanks to the wholesale demonisation of males by the feminists. 

And many millions of men are - and have been - responding to this by turning their backs on their own societies. 

Indeed, they are not only increasingly refusing to support their own societies, many are, in fact, responding by giving them a bloody nose! - crime, violence etc.

Well. Let us look at some of the reasons why western men might have become this way as a result of feminism (and, indeed, as a result of political correctness).

1. The constant feminist-inspired demonisation and denigration of men throughout the west has resulted not only in many of them feeling worthless, with the result that they now reject the worthwhile values of their own societies (with some turning to crime, drugs, irresponsible behaviours etc) it has also undermined any reason for them to shape up.

You might as well be hung for being a sheep as a lamb!

Furthermore, the ubiquitous negative descriptions of men that continually pour out of the mainstream media simply make many men feel quite entitled to behave in accordance with those very same descriptions!

For example, I once saw a headline in a newspaper complaining about the fact that, "Men do not do housework." 

As a taunt to my partner, I cut out the headline and stuck it on the notice board in the kitchen. But I added the following words underneath it. "Well, if men are not doing any housework, then neither am I!"

The point is that if men are persistently deemed to be slothful - or whatever - then many men, with much justification, will see no reason to behave any differently from the way in which they and their fellow men are being depicted. 

2. The western educational system has been so heavily biased against boys for the past few decades that they are doing very badly at school. Not only have the educationalists been using diabolically poor teaching methods (e.g. in their teaching of reading skills) but the curricula have been so feminised and politically corrected that boys quickly lose any interest that they might have had in being 'educated'. 

This, coupled with poor standards of discipline, has led to our societies having to bear the burden of having millions of undisciplined, uneducated males in their midsts.

3. The effect of feminism and political correctness in education - e.g. in the study of History - and in the mainstream media, where 'great white men of noble character' are hardly seen to exist any more means that there are few good role models for boys in their growing years. And the images of men that are daily inflicted upon young men and boys are overwhelmingly negative.

Is it surprising, therefore, that so many men actually have no real concept of what a 'good man' is?

Such men do not exist in the world that is being presented to them.

4. Thanks to the wholesale corruption of the family courts and the "no-fault" divorce laws, men no longer have any real motivation to devote most of their lives, their love, their money etc into bringing up a family. Why should they - when it can all be taken away from them at the whim of their partners?

Furthermore, prejudicial 'relationship laws' - such as those pertaining to domestic violence and child abuse etc - make men feel very insecure within their relationships.

And to add to all this there is the daily carpeting of man-hatred that pours out of the feminist-dominated media telling women and children to report their partners for abuse of some sort. 

Well. There are only two main ways in which men can deal with the relationship insecurity that all this brings about.

Firstly, they can stop caring very much about their relationships so that they are not too hurt when they eventually break down. 

Secondly, they can refrain completely from committing themselves to, or from investing in, any long-term serious ones.

And, indeed, this is exactly what the research shows western men to be doing.

5. The welfare system hotly promoted and buttressed both by the feminists and the politically correct supports single motherhood. And the same is true for the laws concerning child-support payments and alimony. 

These not only make fathers and husbands redundant, they also encourage their very own women and children to see them in exactly this way.

Men are, therefore, easily rejected, and they are often also treated with contempt.

They are, after all, redundant.

And another word for 'redundant' is, of course, 'worthless'.

6. Family and marital breakdown are the major cause of misbehaviour and poor socialisation in males. Indeed, those who are brought up without their fathers at home are far more likely ... 

... to live in poverty and deprivation

... to be trouble in school 
... to have more trouble getting along with others 
... to have health problems 
... to suffer physical, emotional, or sexual abuse 
... to run away from home 
... to experience problems with sexual health 

... to become teenage parents 
... to offend against the law
... to smoke, drink alcohol and take drugs 
... to play truant from school 
... to be excluded from school 
... to leave school at 16 

... to have adjustments to adulthood problems
... to attain little in the way of qualifications 
... to experience unemployment
... to have low incomes 
... to be on welfare
... to experience homelessness 

... to go to jail 
... to suffer from long term emotional and psychological problems  
... to engage only in casual relationships
... to have children outside marriage or outside any partnership

But feminists have always done their best to break up traditional families and to exclude fathers from them, because they believe that traditional families are oppressive to women.

And this particularly huge catalogue of societal ills that has arisen directly from their assault on marriage and family was successfully repressed by the mainstream feminist-fearing media for two decades.

7. The encouragement of immigration - legal and illegal - by the left-wing politically correct (supported heavily by feminists) has led to a breaking down of the main culture and to a large increase in the size of the criminal underclass. This, together with all the factors mentioned previously, has led to millions of young men engaging in crime or in being closely associated with others who engage in it. 

In the UK, one-third of all men have a criminal conviction. In the USA, some 2 million men are in prison and another 4 million are somehow currently involved with the criminal justice system.

8. As Lew Rockwell readers will know only too well, taxes are far too high as a consequence of the ever-burgeoning government and its ever-increasing activities. 

Well. It is women - and feminists in particular - and other 'minorities' - through their politically-corrected activists - who are the main supporters of big government and heavy taxation.

And the result of heavy taxation is that people are less motivated when it comes to working for a living and, for many men, it makes crime and sloth an even more attractive option.

Well, I could go on and make many more connections between feminism and the poor behaviours of men.

But do I really need to?

If you glance again at the 8 points above you will see that they allude to huge negative influences that impact, in some way or other, upon all males. And they each affect all males very badly indeed.

Furthermore, every single one of these huge negative influences directly arises from ideas and policies promoted and buttressed by feminists.

Indeed, feminism is the main cause of the most pressing problems facing western societies.

None of the above is to suggest that genes do not play a part in the bad behaviours of men. They surely do - just as much as they do with regard to the bad behaviours of women. And neither is it necessary to make any claims about whether children are 'born good' - and are corrupted by society - or 'born bad' - and need to be disciplined and socialised.

The point is that we do know that the way in which societies are constructed, the values that they hold, and the methods through which their aims are sought, have a great bearing on the way in which the people within them behave - e.g. just look at the effects of fatherlessness listed above.

And when an ideology has been hugely pervasive, influential and dominant for three whole decades it should not be allowed to escape from being seen as significantly responsible for the social consequences that are very clearly associated with it.

Furthermore, if western men continue to be persistently attacked, accused, vilified, undermined and demonised, disempowered within their families and discriminated against through the justice system, their behaviours are likely to grow considerably worse!

And if feminists continue to pursue their aims without regard to the way in which they are alienating millions of men, my guess is that in the not-too-distant future both they and their supporters (e.g. in the media, in academia and in government) are going to be in for a very nasty shock.

Finally, given that feminists have ruthlessly pursued their aims without regard to the well-being of men, why should men not now do the very same?

For example, why should men strive particularly hard to support their families given that some 50% of them will eventually lose them; and much else besides - with a further significant percentage remaining in unhappy marriages because they have no realistic alternatives? Why should they labour to set themselves up for so much serious hurt?

Why should men work for long hours? - particularly if they have onerous jobs and given that the state will take much of their earnings in taxes. 

Why should men with limited resources bother to save any money when their governments will tax it and subject it to significant devaluation?

Why should men commit themselves to one particular woman when so many are now available for fun and frolics?

Why should men not seek hours of pleasure from superficial pursuits - such as those deriving from their various gadgets, toys, sports and videogames? Do not women spend many of their hours gawping at celebrities and soap operas, and thinking about fashion, cosmetics and romantic fantasies?

And what, exactly, are men supposed to be aiming for?

Why should men not be aggressive or offensive toward women given that women are nowadays aggressive and offensive toward them?

Indeed, why should men pursue 'nobler' aims when these are persistently undermined by feminists and their governments?

The bad behaviours of men mostly reflect the fact that western men are now following more their own desires and their own predilections. And they are caring less about how this may affect others.

In other words, they are doing exactly what the feminist handbooks and many women's magazines have been urging women to do for years.

[SauronOfMordor]

They screamed that I was sexually harrassing them. So I slammed the door on them.

Was this near a college with a militant "womyns studies" dept?

[Nick Danger]

Today's radical liberals continue the work of Gramsci except that destroying traditional culture, which used to be means, became goal.

I have that sense too... that when the Soviet Union fell, leftist radicals sort of lost their purpose. But they keep on going through the motions because they don't know what else to do.

I don't think, though, that leftist radicals were ever this good. We've had leftists around forever, and while they have certainly pushed America leftward, they have not turned the entire culture upside-down.

OK, maybe the Gramsci process is a catastrophic one, i.e. instead of long, slow progress, it appears to be doing nothing for a very long time. And then -wham- all this stuff changes rapidly. Perhaps. And maybe this whole business of fuzzing up gender roles and identities is simply a Gramscian tactic in pursuit of social collapse, with the Marxists assuming there will be Marxism on the other side.

I have viewed feminism the same way for a long time. One explanation for the kind of 'organized feminism' we've seen over the last 30 years is that some female Marxists hit upon a way to sell class struggle in the United States. Labor vs management was never a very good "class struggle" wrench for American communists, but men vs women lit up the boards. Marxists had finally identified the oppressor class, and the oppressed class, and we could have Marxist class struggle all day long, with glorious statism to the rescue.

I'll say this: it worked a lot better than the old Gus Hall recipe for selling communism.

What if they aren't Marxists. Or rather, what if feminism isn't so much Marxist radicals using 'men vs women class struggle' to push toward Marxism as it is homosexual females using statism more as tool to enact a totally different agenda that is only "Marxist" to the extent it is convenient, and the need for an all-powerful state appears in both Marxist and feminist agendas?

The Steyn column I linked above has me thinking. How does a relative handful of homosexual males and females jerk this entire culture around the way they are doing? We are witnessing a skill set here that is truly amazing. Fewer than a thousand lesbian activists started what is now an unstoppable vicious circle that is destroying the ability of the culture to even form families and raise children, to the point that we are literally going out of business. Whatever agenda they had in mind is probably off the table, because what they started is out of control now. It's going to run its course, and where it ends no one knows.

But look at this: now the same huge majority of people who sat idly by while a bunch of very determined lesbians torqued the legal system into turning marriage into something so onerous for men that huge numbers of young men will now not go near it... those same people are standing around watching in amazement as homosexual men take over youth organizations and bring the same wrath-of-government crap down on their enemies that the lesbians did twenty years ago. This is not Marxism at all. It is homosexuals jerking the entire culture around to promote their own sexuality. It's not even politics; it's absolutely base-level crap. The statism is only there because a huge, intrusive state is one of two necessary conditions needed to pull this off.

The other is Big Media... a huge network of bullhorns and outdoor speakers through which to pump a stream of extremely cleverly-manipulated symbols into the culture.

I haven't really thought this through, so there could be all kinds of holes in it. But it is very clear that we are watching people at work here whose skill at symbol manipulation is waaaaayy higher than average. These are the best propagandists the world has ever seen. They are jerking around a huge culture in which they are perhaps 5 to 10% of the population, if that, and they are jerking it around in ways that unhook millenia-old traditions and taboos. That is absolutely amazing.

Is this really Marxism? I don't think so. Is it Gramscian? Technique-wise perhaps, but is its goal a Marxist state? A totalitarian state, to be sure. But that's only because they're a tiny minority, and without a strong government with which to cram their agenda down everyone's throat, they couldn't do it. Maybe it's all about sex.

[Torie]

Have you noticed that the equal worth pay issue has died? Maybe the Lesbians are less influential than you think. I grant you that stupid economic postulations have a shorter half live than more subjective social ones do. When voters think that their kids might well go gay due to external influences, your point of view might gain political traction. But most parents don't really believe that their kids are are at risk, because they "know" their kids. Thus, you have a problem from a political point of view.

[BobS]

I agree with all you have said. Notice, though, all the women on internet dating sites who have a few children from "bad boys" who are now looking for "nice guys"? LOL! They had their fun and want someone else to deal with the results! HAHA!

[BobS]

Maybe it is time for men to refuse to work for more than 50-75K. A man can live well on that salary without paying into the welfare state if he realized his potential.

[SauronOfMordor]

Maybe it is time for men to refuse to work for more than 50-75K. A man can live well on that salary without paying into the welfare state if he realized his potential.

That might work out. If you're very productive, instead of going for more pay, go for more time off

[SauronOfMordor]

I haven't really thought this through, so there could be all kinds of holes in it. But it is very clear that we are watching people at work here whose skill at symbol manipulation is waaaaayy higher than average. These are the best propagandists the world has ever seen. They are jerking around a huge culture in which they are perhaps 5 to 10% of the population, if that, and they are jerking it around in ways that unhook millenia-old traditions and taboos. That is absolutely amazing.

Perhaps we are seeing a multiplier effect. Gays are more out-of-the-closet these days, and communicating with each other more, which leads to more opportunities to interact and network. This in turn leads to a higher ability to set up gay "old-boys-networks" so they can push grant funding to each other, and help each others careers, particularly in media (heavily-gay NY Times editorial board), the entertainment industry (Hollywood always had a large gay element), etc. Consider also the Internet, and the effect that things like FR had for the conservative community -- there's probably online communities for gays that serve the same function. So a small number of very smart gays now suddenly has the ability to communicate their ideas to a much larger audience.

A small, tight group can have major impact against an unorganized, larger community. Look at the Bolsheviks in 1917-18

[Nick Danger]

Have you noticed that the equal worth pay issue has died? Maybe the Lesbians are less influential than you think.

Perhaps so. Maybe we should all go back to sleep. Having achieved penalties in law against men on the basis of how individual women feel about things, after the fact, they are now satisfied and we will not be hearing from them again. And if rather large numbers of young men are basically 'on strike' against marriage these days, well, it's their loss. Another 20% of kids will grow up in fatherless homes. And that's a good thing.

When voters think that their kids might well go gay due to external influences, your point of view might gain political traction.

What 'point of view' would that be? If my point of view got 'traction', what do you think would happen? I don't recall offering any policy prescriptions. Mostly I expressed amazement, even admiration, for what are arguably the two most incredibly successful cultural propaganda campaigns in human history. Imagine the wholesale demonization of men, serious changes to fundamental assumptions in law, and jiggering the institutional forms around a 5,000-year-old social institution so as to make it unattractive to large swaths of the male population, all in the space of about 30 years. That's no mean feat. I'm not real sanguine about where these changes will lead, but as a feat of social engineering, I stand in awe.

Your formulation seems to suggest that the concern parents should have about homosexual proselytizing in schools turns on whether or not adolescents can be made to "go gay," and that in the absence of that happening, parents can and should encourage such proselytizing, or at least be complacent about it. Perhaps so. That is not for me to say. I merely note that it is not something I would have expected to see in my lifetime, and for that reason hail it as another truly amazing feat of cultural tweaking.

you have a problem from a political point of view

If you're telling me that most people will choose to do nothing about any of these trends, I wholeheartedly agree with you. We will ride them to wherever they go. To that extent I feel a little like Mr. Spock on the bridge of the Enterprise. "Sensors indicate a large and growing fraction of men refusing to participate in marriage." To which the answers are variously things like 'Men should stop whining,' and 'If they would just find a nice Christian girl, everything would be fine,' or 'Well, I've been married for 25 years, and I don't see any problems.' To which I can only reply, "Fascinating."

[ArneFufkin]

The Bolshevik-ruled Soviet society lost as many as 40 million of their youngest and most educated males in the two World Wars and the Lenin-Stalin purges of 1917-1950. That is a colossal trauma to the imperative of intergeneralional father-son and male peer-peer socialization of young men as playing vital life roles as family providers, protectors and pillars of strength and kindness.

The 5th column has actively pursued the destruction of American society through an indoctrination of generations of women AND men that they males are primitive, violent, dishonest, untrustworthy and ultimately unnecessary in the family by providing economic security and raising their biological children.

Look at Liberal Socialisms great petri dish of anti-male assault: urban "Black" America. Matriarchal cultures become self-fufilling legacies of cultural pathology.

Why do you think Clinton was so popular with the man-hating feminists? He embodied all the traits of moral weakness, dishonesty and betrayal they've been attributing to the male gender in 20 years of women's studies, welfare and media disinformation. He was useful on abortion and child care, two staples of the Government over Male agenda.

A baby boy born to a single mother, devoid of the role model a man provides as a stable role model of loving commitment to a woman and family, is doomed. Mama doesn't need a man around, his dad was no good anyway. Baby girls don't have a male role model to demand that men treat them with love and care. Who needs men? The County pays the bills, and the po-lice and gangbangers take care of the menfolk.

Every father figure portrayed on television, except Bill Cosby and John Goodman, is an insensitive dolt to the wife and kids. Men are "playas", idiots or if they are presented in a positive way, they are a homosexual. We're all Homer Simpson and Al Bundy.

[Nick Danger]

Maybe it is time for men to refuse to work for more than 50-75K.

I don't think you'll ever sell that as a general proposition ("Let's all hose ourselves for the common good!" OK, you first), but there is clearly a 'tipping point' where that occurs.

It is common for guys who get whacked with some of the more generous post-marital settlements to react in exactly that way, and it makes perfect economic sense. If you tell a guy that 50 or 60 per cent of his gross will be taken off the top, that means that the after-tax impact of a one-dollar reduction in salary is 25 or 30 cents, if that. So we see the nuclear physicist deciding to go drive a pizza truck instead. He doesn't really lose that much, but he has thrown a spear at the system that did this to him. Meanwhile the society loses the services of a highly-trained nuclear physicist. So you can see that it's important to do this to as many men as possible, as quickly as we can.

[I_dmc]

To post 135, I can only respond with applause.

[I_dmc]

All evidence points to Western Culture imploding in on itself. One point that I don't believe was mentioned was, "We will not go quietly into the night". I ache inside for what my sons will live to experience.

[Jim Noble]

I have learned a lot from you today.

I revere Nick Danger as a god.

He has been on this since usenet started up.

If only he had a blog, he could save the world...

[Jim Noble]

I assume that we are to take that as a warning that if we would like any more of your scintillating company, we should shut up and talk about what you want.

Tell her about the coconuts.

[Jim Noble]

I believe that back in Victorian times, middle-class gentlemen were more likely to marry at around or after 30, to women in their early twenties. Marriage was deferred until the man could support a wife, which meant that men married well-into their careers

That is a great system, but it takes the best wives off the market for 20 year old men, creating a large unmarried urban and rural proletariat.

England is still suffering from the result.

[Jim Noble]

Your friend's wife needs to be bitch-slapped by the courts

If your aunt had balls, she'd be your uncle.

[sakic]

The whole premise of this article is pure garbage. Men as a whole are behaving worse than they previously did. Yeah, right.

The author in a zeal to come to the conclusions they previously had thought correct, ignores the facts of history.

[Jim Noble]

Hey, Nick! Karl Glasson, Ph.D Doesn't understand that men finally are figuring out that women like a confident, maybe "bad boy" who are a challenge! Gals will complain about them, but how many "nice guys" get laid when they want to?

Bob, you can get laid when you want to in Somalia or Haiti right now.

You will see Somalia here, in your lifetime, because of all the people who want to get laid when they want to.

Hope you like it.

[Jim Noble]

My best friend got dumped by his ex-wife and now pays well over 40 % of his gross in child support alone. He lives in a tiny walk-up in NYC while his wife and kids have a nice big apt on the Upper East Side. He was pretty near suicidal after it first happened; he certainly is not the same person he was 10 yrs ago, in many ways. And he can barely influence his kids' upbringing, either. Very sad.

He should stop paying.

Really.

[Jim Noble]

But it is very clear that we are watching people at work here whose skill at symbol manipulation is waaaaayy higher than average.

there is more to it than flowers and hair design...