To the TAIL end!
Posted on 11/18/2011 8:33:27 AM PST by Kaslin
These are difficult and perilous times for boys. A distorted culture has robbed them of virtue to measure themselves against. The good once associated with masculinity in a patriarchal society has been tossed out with the bad. This, alas, is the era of feminist ascendency.
Manhood is more easily mocked, satirized and derided, or exposed for its villainy, exploitation and criminality, than held up as an ideal for boys to aspire to. We've always had rogues, rascals and villains, but until now we've also had a baseline, a common denominator, of what it means to be a man. Male-female cultural distinctions, once blurred, now are disappearing.
That was a touching moment when Gloria Cain, in defense of her husband, told Greta van Susteren of Fox News that the harassment accusations couldn't be true because he was a man of "old-school manners," like walking next to the curb when he strolled down the sidewalk with her. Such considerations never made the man, but they were reminders that men cheerfully expected to protect women.
In the previous century, a man didn't have to be a John Wayne hero to be appreciated. His identity was less about the kind of work he did than by the fact that he worked. That single fact has been repealed by the accumulation of cultural changes that do not serve men -- or women -- well. Fewer men than women are finishing high school and obtaining undergraduate or professional degrees. They're entering the workforce much later. They're often dependent on government or family for sustenance. The recession makes things worse.
This confuses children. In a world dominated by media images, the flashy figures of sport and entertainment exert a disproportionate influence on the ambitions and aspirations of the young. The rich and famous become shallow idols, worshipped for their shortcuts in the pursuit of happiness that usually lead only to the illusion of a pot of gold at the end of a vanishing rainbow.
This bothers Bill Bennett, former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, secretary of education in the Reagan administration and drug czar for George H.W. Bush. He's a prophet exiled from the Old Testament, marking the decline of civilization. His first book, "The Book of Virtues," a collection of moral tales, was an overnight best-seller to readers hungry for the literary gems that had once been a staple of the culture. His new book, "The Book of Man," is an anthology of literary forces riding to the rescue of a culture in a "crisis of manliness."
In the 1950s, he reminds us, 96 percent of boys and men between 15 and 54 worked at real jobs. That number has dropped to 80 percent today. The New Yorker magazine captured the essence of the "Boomerang Generation" with a cover depicting a young man hanging his Ph.D on the wall of his childhood bedroom, to dismay on the faces of his parents stuck with an unwanted roomer.
There are fewer entry-level jobs in an information-based society, which delays the assumption of responsibility. The result for men from deprived backgrounds is catastrophic. Statistics reflect the woe of young black women who are substantially more educated and economically well-off than young black men, which makes their marriage prospects slim. (In one study, one in five black men born between 1975 and 1979 had been in prison before they reached the age of 34.)
What boys -- and men -- do better than girls and women is playing video games. It's hardly surprising that the most popular first-person shooter games that once drew on heroics from World War II now depict violent fantasies set in the immediate future without an authentic historical context. One of the games appeals to the "soldier in all of us." But the conflicts depicted require neither conceptual nor moral thinking about real conflicts. It's forever playtime.
"Why are there so many boys and men who are irresponsible, unmotivated, unchivalrous, selfish, lazy?" asks Bill Bennett. "Why do so many boys and men spend so much time in pointless and soulless activities inconsiderate of others, absorbed in self or mindless technology?"
He doesn't answer the question, but he gives cause for reflection in one volume with examples of man at work and play, governing, soldiering, praying, demonstrating being responsible for families. The men in the stories are not merely slouching toward technology. Times have changed, he argues, but the need for virtue and character in man has not. That's a tough sell.
No, don’t blame women. Blame the men that like to put their anatomy in places where God never intended. Women are suffering just as much because men don’t protect them anymore, just prey on them like they do the boys.
What is a “real job”?
Blame liberals...They are ground zero for this f’d up society!
US Navy, for one.
PC media images = Gay
Isn’t every branch achieving their recruiting goals?
1. Joining the military, any branch, was once the chance for pampered, sheltered boys to become toughened, self-respected men because they were placed in an all-male environment, where they had to live up to MEN's expectations, among MEN. For the first time, for most of them, they were placed in a 100 percent MAN's world, removed from teen-angst that is necessarily and ALWAYS the result of teenaged boys placed among teenaged girls.
Today, boys joining the miliary are denied that opportunity. Joining the military is more like moving from high school to junior college. Personally, I think it is an enormously rotten and wrong thing to do to boys.
2. "Family law" (an oxymoron) in the U.S. has reduced fathers to emasculated providers of money, and mothers to Ultimate Authorities in terms of discipline. Boys grow up seeing that their dad is a paper tiger in terms of disciplinarian authority, yet a slave in terms of $$ child support -- so WHAT BOY IN HIS RIGHT MIND is going to look forward to being a father himself? Is it any wonder that today's boys commit suicide in huge numbers, and listen to music where the lyrics are so hateful toward women?
Now, there are even going to be women on submarines, which to me is so incredibly disrespectful toward men that it makes me more disgusted with American womanhood and its insufferable vanity than I already am, and that's considerable. I am 100 percent convinced that putting women alongside men on submarines, putting women alongside men in combat zones, combined with the embrace of open homosexuality in the U.S. military, is a deliberate act of sabotage against our armed forces.
Think about it -- if you wanted to sabotage your enemy's armies and navies, wouldn't you just LOVE it if you could make their forces include open homosexuality and girls ("women") among the men? A co-ed submarine vs. an all-male-crewed submarine -- who do you think would win THAT battle?
I'm a woman who loves and respects men. I understand a TRUTH that women who are stupid, spoiled, and egotistic fail to perceive: Men are the sole protectors of women.
Ladies, there are times when we owe it to men, our only protectors, to get our vanity out of the way, step aside, and LEAVE THEM ALONE to do jobs that MEN are designed to do, and one of those jobs is to be front-line warriors. In those situations, all we women do is get in the way and serve as distractions. We can be warriors in a different way, and we owe it to ourselves, our children, and our men to remember it.
Sounds all nice to blame the women - it’s our own fault. We were told to jump off the bridge and so we did.
It’s like blaming the bishops for poor Catholic formation - now we’re older and it’s been done, so educate yourself!!!
Just stop. Dad, grow a pair and teach your boys what it’s like to have a pair.
Then go marry a smart lonely black woman! After brining her into the faith.
Do not blame women, exactly, but feminism.
Delegitimization of the male role model, and the best of the differences between men and women, for the worst of results; Feminism has redefined the role of men, from the perspective of the feminist woman, and shamed men into compliance through political correctness.
A great book I am reading which is hitting on this;
The Revolt of the Primitive; An inquiry into the Roots of Political Correctness
by Howard Schwartz
Teach your sons to behave properly and don’t be afraid to be a man!
Teach your daughters to behave properly and don’t be afraid to be a woman.
Men and women respecting each other!!!!
I personally am sick and tired of the stupid ass ads on TV that make men look stupid while the woman roles her eyes at him.
They ads try to make the female look superior to the male plain and simple.
Enough of this pitting men against women or women against men. Women are women and men are men and that is how God made us all.
When Manly Virtue Died
Bill seldom does.
You touched on something. Respect is not recognized by radical feminists. Only power.
Respect, i suspect, is not a concept the left can even understand because it requires emphasis on the individual over the collective.
Don't overlook the part played by men annonymous sperm donors who leave their offspring to be raised by mothers only.
It's not the core of the problem but it is a contributing factor to the ongoing pussyfication of America.
Men nor women know how to behave anymore.
It’s a sad state of affairs we live in. Feminism ranted and raved about women doing for themselves and not depending on men for anything. I know when I walk into a store if a man holds a door for me I stop and make sure I THANK him because I APPRECIATE a man opening a door for me or stepping aside to allow me to enter into the area first. That’s how a gentleman is. I want to see my husband and son behave in the same manner.
I also want to see a woman be able to walk down a street without some idiot hollering foul things at her. Because one person is an idiot is no reason to make a blanket statement that all men are pigs, etc.. as has been said in the past. All men are NOT pigs and...all women are NOT feminists who get mad if a man opens a door for them.
I think raising sons and daughters is very important. Sons should be taught from the get go how to treat little girls and how to protect them and daughters should also be taught from the get go how to treat little boys and how to act around them as well.
Everyone should behave with manners and respect for one another and as long as we continue to pit men and women against each other then God help the country.
The author is a woman. There are many articles and books by women criticizing men for being unmanly and too feminized.
The fact is the feminists with their victim mentality have won. They have won and reduced men to weak, feminized children. Now they whine about it and complain about how men have turned into what feminists said they should be.
If men are strong they are attacked as sexist. If they are sensitive they are attacked as unmanly.
Men are routinely diminished in TV commercials, portrayed as buffoons, idiots and incompetents. No wonder kids (boys) don’t want to grow up.
Join the Infantry or Armor. Women can't hack it in those specialties - they're too weak.
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