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Matrimony or Bust – Another Glimpse at the Why and How of Traditional Marriage’s Demise By: Msgr. Charles PopeAll the way back in 1973, George Guilder published a book called Men and Marriage. He expanded and republished it in 1986. In his book, Guilder argued that our culture was marginalizing men, to its great peril. He articulated the critical role that marriage has in helping men focus their sexual energies in a creative and beneficial way. Women have their nurturing role rather clearly defined in the very design of their bodies. But men’s role in the raising of children and in society...

It is no secret that our culture as a whole is descending into an ever-deeper sexual confusion. Recently two examples of this were in the news.In the first article which I summarize here, a Canadian couple have chosen to raise (impose upon?) their child a “genderless” upbringing. For now, they have refused to tell any of their family or friends the sex of their child, whom they call “Storm,” and groom and dress the infant child ambiguously.I would like to provide excerpts of a much longer article here and comment as we go. As usual, the article is in bold,...

In 2000, Christina Hoff Sommers published The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men. Hoff Sommers was already known as a critic of late-20th-century feminism; her much-lauded and much-disparaged 1994 book Who Stole Feminism? had provoked charges that she was anti-women. In August, Hoff Sommers, now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, updated and reissued her bestseller on boys with a new subtitle: How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men. Hoff Sommers makes the case that boys and girls are fundamentally different—and that ignoring the difference, in an effort to protect...

At the same time, there is good reason for males (men as well as boys) to be more fearful of sex than females. Contemporary reproductive technology and law place all the burden for unwanted pregnancy on them. Between the pill and abortion, women have complete control over the reproductive process. They can avoid or end any unwanted pregnancy, and the man involved has no say in the matter. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the U.S. Supreme Court went so far as to hold that a married woman has the constitutional right to abort her husband's child without even telling...

Liberals are tremendously attached to the idea that we are apes, but are unwilling to face the fact that we humans still retain an awful lot of our ape programming. This is what led to the Christian concept of Original Sin and the Jewish concept that we are all born with both the urge to good and the urge to evil. And this programming is not identical for men and women, because behavior that enables a male chimp to pass his genes on might get a female chimp a new home in a saber-toothed tiger's stomach. Sometimes when I read...

A new guidebook reaffirms boyhood in all of its politically incorrect glory. The frontispiece in Conn and Hal Iggulden’s The Dangerous Book for Boys says it all—a skull and crossbones boldly heralds adventure, treasure, and unbridled boyish fun. According to its English authors, this is a book for boys who want to be “self-sufficient and find their way in the stars.” It’s a delightful compendium of knowledge, life tips, building projects, games, and hands-on invention. At its heart, the book unabashedly reaffirms and celebrates the traditional moral leather that has guided untold generations of men in their voyage through life. ...

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; from the accounts, my dad and his brothers certainly fit the description given of boys by one psychologist who called boys “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...

Some commentators like to point out that many of the most passionate and bravest defenders of the West are women, citing Italian writer Oriana Fallaci and others as examples. But women like Ms. Fallaci, brave as they might be, are not representative of all Western women. If you look closely, you will notice that, on average, Western women are actually more supportive of Multiculturalism and massive immigration than are Western men. I got many comments on my posts about Muslim anti-female violence in Scandinavia. Several of my readers asked what Scandinavian men are doing about this. What happened to those...

Another possibility is that Western feminists fail to confront Muslim immigration for ideological reasons. Many of them are silent on Islamic oppression of women because they have also embraced “Third-Worldism” and anti-Western sentiments. I see some evidence in support of this thesis. American writer Phyllis Chesler has sharply criticized her sisters in books such as The Death of Feminism. She feels that too many feminists have abandoned their commitment to freedom and “become cowardly herd animals and grim totalitarian thinkers,” thus failing to confront Islamic terrorism. She paints a portrait of current U.S. University campuses as steeped in “a new...

Since I started teaching several years ago, after 25 years in the movie business, I’ve come to learn firsthand that everything I’d heard about the feminization of our schools is real—and far more pernicious to boys than I had imagined. Christina Hoff Sommers was absolutely accurate in describing, in her 2000 bestseller, The War Against Boys, how feminist complaints that girls were “losing their voice” in a male-oriented classroom have prompted the educational establishment to turn the schools upside down to make them more girl-friendly, to the detriment of males. As a result, boys have become increasingly disengaged. Only 65...

How the Schools Shortchange Boys, by Gerry Garibaldi In the newly feminized classroom, boys tune out. Since I started teaching several years ago, after 25 years in the movie business, I’ve come to learn firsthand that everything I’d heard about the feminization of our schools is real—and far more pernicious to boys than I had imagined. Christina Hoff Sommers was absolutely accurate in describing, in her 2000 bestseller, The War Against Boys, how feminist complaints that girls were “losing their voice” in a male-oriented classroom have prompted the educational establishment to turn the schools upside down to make them more...

In the new millennium, articles describing the intellectual differences between the genders have been altogether too commonplace. As a result, it wasn’t difficult to presage from the cover of Newsweek’s most recent issue where the editors were going with a headline like “The Boy Crisis.” In fact, once inside, the featured piece, “The Trouble With Boys,” turned into just another in a long line of “exposes” depicting girls as being smarter than boys. After a pleasant introduction, author Peg Tyre began her laundry list of male deficiencies: “By almost every benchmark, boys across the nation and in every demographic group...

Laura Bush to focus on well-being of boys over next four years AFP Photo US First Lady Laura Bush will focus on boys' well-being and on international efforts to promote literacy among women during her second four years in the White House, the first lady revealed.There's a "stereotype that boys don't need the same nurturing that girls do, that boys can take care of themselves. And, of course, we all know that's not true," Laura Bush said Friday as Washington rushed to prepare for her President George W. Bush's inauguration six days hence.Laura Bush, who spent her husband's first term promoting...

By Charles W. Colson Commentary from BreakPoint The Cleveland Avenue School in Atlanta has all the amenities you would expect a new school to have: computer equipment, an up-to-date library, and modern classrooms. It has everything except a playground. No, it wasn't an oversight. It was designed that way, in order to make little boys behave more like little girls. And it's part of a trend. In 1998, Atlanta eliminated recess in its elementary schools. Other cities, like Philadelphia, retained something called recess, but it bears little resemblance to the unstructured play time most of us enjoyed as kids. Why?...

This past spring, my son spent a month in Israel with his senior class. Only one activity disappointed him. While camping in the Negev Desert, special counselors from a progressive-socialist kibbutz paid a visit and led the students through a sensitivity exercise. The students were told to walk out into the desert until they were completely alone. The counselors (mostly American-born) supplied them with a pencil, paper, matches, and a candle and instructed them to absorb the quiet calm of the desert, to record their feelings, and to “find themselves.” The girls happily complied. Most of the boys did not....

Mysterious Decline-Where Are the Men on Campus?By Glenn Sacks on 04/30/03 Everybody wants to know where all the men have gone. The Washington Post calls their disappearance the "question that has grown too conspicuous to ignore," and USA Today notes "universities fret about how to attract males as women increasingly dominate campuses." Females now outnumber males by a four to three ratio in American colleges, a difference of almost two million students. Men earn only 43% of all college degrees. Among blacks, two women earn bachelor’s degrees for every man. Among Hispanics, only 40 percent of college graduates are male....