“Under My Thumb” – The Rolling Stones 

This bluesy Rock n’ Roll tune by one of the leading groups of the British Invasion of the mid-1960s is sure to make a blue-haired man-hater’s head explode.

In this song, Mick Jagger tells a story from the perspective of a man who has been in an emotionally abusive relationship. It’s a classic case of the old saying, “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.” After having fun running around, she realizes how good she had it with her previous lover and comes back begging for his affection and will do whatever he says. As he says, 

 “It’s down to me
Yes it is
The way she does just what she’s told down to me
The change has come
She’s under my thumb
Ah, ah, say it’s alright.”

 Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it?

“Stand By Your Man” – Tammy Wynette 

Tammy Wynette’s classic country ballad, which she co-wrote with her record producer Billy Sherrill became a #1 hit on the country charts in 1968 and a top 20 pop hit. The song was written as a love song by a woman who ironically was preparing for her second divorce. It was marketed as Wynette’s response to the women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s.

The ballad will make all the femininazis cringe as it discusses a woman being loyal to her man even when he does things that aren’t right. The song faced just as much criticism by the women’s liberation when it was released as it has in more modern times.

“A Newsweek article called it a song, quote, “for the beleaguered housewife who grits her teeth as destiny dumps its slop on her head.” And fellow singer Jeannie C. Riley of “Harper Valley PTA” fame said, quote, “It sounds like you should take anything he dishes out.” Ironically, Wynette, while recording the song, was preparing to divorce her second husband for George Jones, another turbulent marriage she would eventually leave. Evelyn Shriver says Wynette defended the song, calling it a reflection of her background.”, according to NPR.

 The ballad was even mocked by former First Lady Hillary Clinton, according to The Wallstreet Journal.

 “Hard Headed Woman” – Elvis Presley 

Elvis the Pelvis was known for his ability to make women faint with his high energy shows, soulful southern voice, and legendary leg shakes. Feminists would be throwing something harder than themselves at the King of Rock ‘n Roll for this track.

In this song, Elvis takes us all the way back to creation in which he states that all the world’s problems have been caused by a “hard head woman and a soft-hearted man who have been causing trouble ever since the world began.”

The track highlights three biblical stories, including “Adam and Eve”, “Samson and Delilah”, and Jezebel and King Ahab. The lyrics light-heartedly poke fun of the female characters in each story, claiming that they were the source of each man’s downfall. Presley then relays his own frustrations with his own love interest in the last verse.

The song is great because it will throw the same logic feminists use by asserting that the patriarchy is the source of the world’s problems right back in their faces in a joking way.

 “A Woman’s Place is in the Home” – Gilbert O’ Sullivan

 1970’s Irish Pop Star Gilbert O’ Sullivan bangs out a ballad on his piano that will wreck every bra-burning broad’s mind. Sullivan’s song defends traditional western values, which he boldly states is that a woman belongs at home. In the mid-1970s, when the song was released, popular culture had already started to reject the idea of a woman staying home to raise her children and began pushing the idea that women should be in the workplace. Sullivan notes that he admires a woman “who can make it on her own,” but he believes a woman’s place in the home. If you want to destroy a loud-mouthed man-hater’s day, cranking this up on your nearest sound system should do the trick.

 “Bitches Ain’t Shit” – Dr. Dre

 To round out the list, Dr. Dre’s 1992 West Coast Rap classic is guaranteed to trigger any feminist tramp! Dr. Dre’s bumping beat talks about screwing women and using them for sex and kicking them to the curb. I should note that in no way do I think this is acceptable behavior, but if third-wave feminists are going to degrade good men, why not throw it back at them and have a little fun with it?  

There you have it, guys—five more fantastic tunes to trigger those self-loathing, man-haters who deep down are in desperate need of getting laid but too consumed with hate to admit it.

Image: Alec Perkins, Flickr

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Rapper Cardi B’s new song “Wet Ass Pussy” (WAP) has made quite a few cultural waves since reaching #1 on iTunes all genre-listening list due to the graphic nature of it’s lyrics.

One of the greatest things about the freedom the First Amendment protects is it ensures that the American people have the freedom to say some incredibly intelligent and radical things.

It also protects the right of people to make an absolute fool of themselves.

Cardi B’s new single would be an example of the latter.

In 2018, the former stripper turned rapper claimed to be a feminist saying, ‘”But then some people are smart but they don’t have no common sense. They think feminism is great and only a woman that can speak properly, that has a degree, who is a boss, a businessperson… they think only Michelle Obama can be a feminist,” Cardi said, according to Elle.com. “Being a feminist is real simple; it’s that a woman can do things the same as a man,” she explained.

“Anything a man can do, I can do. I can finesse, I can hustle. We have the same freedom. I was top of the charts. I’m a woman and I did that. I do feel equal to a man.”, continued Cardi.

I suppose Cardi’s vision for equality implies that women should feel equal in their ability to degrade women. I love rap music. The roots of the genre are based in rebellion against authority and the freedom to express yourself in 48 bars over a beat. .

However, WAP is nothing more than a woman expressing an unhealthy view of female sexuality over a garbage beat.

For me, the issue is not talking about sex in general, but instead, the fact that there’s no true artistic ability, no metaphor or creative pictures being painted. It’s more like Cardi is reading her sexting conversation over a beat. Don’t take my word for it—read for yourself one the verses of Cardi’s new smash hit (pun intended).

“Your honor, I’m a freak bitch, handcuffs, leashes
Switch my wig, make him feel like he cheatin’
Put him on his knees, give him somethin’ to believe in
Never lost a fight, but I’m lookin’ for a beatin’ (Ah)
In the food chain, I’m the one that eat ya
If he ate my ass, he’s a bottom-feeder
Big D stand for big demeanor
I could make ya bust before I ever meet ya
If it don’t hang, then he can’t bang
You can’t hurt my feelings, but I like pain
If he fuck me and ask “Whose is it?”
When I ride the dick, I’ma spell my name, ah”

How could a woman who claims to care about women being treated equally to men in society write words such as these? How do lyrics such as these aids the advancement of women? Encouraging an unhealthy view of sexuality doesn’t empower women, but degrades the most intimate physical act two people can engage in.

While there is never any excuse or justification for someone to be raped, doesn’t it seem strange that a self-proclaimed feminist would pen a song that contributes to the disease that the #MeToo claims to try cure?

If you genuinely care about women being respected, Cardi, why not use your platform to help create a healthy view of human sexuality instead of trying to pass off this trash as rap music? It’s not consistent to claim to want equality while contributing to a culture that treats women as sexual objects. Cardi needs to kick “the whores out of this house” instead of straddling both sides of the fence. However, Cardi seems to have no issues publicly talking about straddling much more than a fence in the name of feminism.

You can listen to the unedited version of the song  below:

Image: screen capture

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Voting is just part of the story, though. As in most cases, the government is an oppressive force that is manipulated by popular sentiment of the time. In fact, this societal struggle was undertaken by individuals who strove to be recognized as free people who deserved liberty.

Lucy Stone was born in Massachusetts in 1818. Her ancestors came to America in the 1600s in pursuit of religious liberty. She was the granddaughter of an American Patriot who fought in the Revolutionary War. Her parents were farmers with a zealous abolitionist stance and active in the church.

Stone’s husband convinced her to marry him by promising an equitable marriage where both of them would have proportionate power. And of course, she would keep her maiden name. She wrote nuanced vows for 1855. She omitted the promise for a wife to be the only one to obey. And included a protest to marital law that treated a woman as property to her husband.

In 1858, Lucy refused to pay property tax because of that traditional American principle, “no taxation without representation”. She was not represented since she couldn’t vote, but the government wants their share of people’s goods regardless of justification. So, they impounded and sold all of her household goods.

In 1879, Stone signed up to vote in the local Massachusetts elections because the state allowed women to vote in such things. However, they denied her this because she did not use her husband’s last name and, thus, did not match any legal citizen’s name. Let me explain that again. The government did not legally recognize her because she kept her daddy’s last name.

Virginia Woolf wrote in A Room of One’s Own (1929) about common rules of the time that banned women from being educated and competing in industry. Woolf explains how when a woman is not reliant upon a man for money to live on, she is freer and less bitter.

“I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me. So imperceptibly I found myself adopting a new attitude towards the other half of the human race.”

What she is describing is an inheritance that she received from her aunt that allowed her to be financially independent because, at the time, women were limited in their work opportunities. So, it was incredibly difficult for a woman to not rely upon someone else for money.

“Indeed, I thought, slipping the silver into my purse, it is remarkable, remembering the bitterness of those days, what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about.”

The “fixed income” she is referring to is not Bernie Sanders-style welfare programs or Andrew Yang’s universal basic income. It just means consistent income that doesn’t rely upon someone else’s charity.

Freedom to make money is one of the most important ingredients to individual liberty. Woolf describes how it not only makes the individual happier, but it also creates an environment where mutual respect and peace flourishes.

Original Feminism did not want to expand government. In fact, it shows how government power can be used to oppress, and creates disparities that could otherwise be solved by individuals, common decency, and mutually beneficial trade.

Allow women (and really anyone) to compete in the market to earn financial independence without government coercion and liberty grows. Or just allow a man to respect his wife in a way that is not the societal norm (i.e., keeping her maiden name). Allow true freedom instead of the coercive harassment that comes when the government denies you the recognition of being more than the property of your husband, the respect of your surname, and the theft of your property.

Patriotism, capitalism, and true feminism all have a liberating effect. The people that defended and fought for these things should not be remembered only for an Amendment that forced a government to act. They were individuals that were so much more than the government that sought to restrain them.

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From the #MeToo madness to the fat-shaming movement and the gender pay gap myth, there seems to be no end to their outrage.

With this abundance of outrage on their end, I thought it might be fun to give you a list of five songs I think will trigger a feminist.

1. “A Bitch Iz a Bitch” by NWA
This Hip-Hop classic is sure to make feminists’ heads explode just by the title alone. In the song, Ice Cube takes the lead describing all the different categories and qualifications of a bitch. You could say he calls it like it is. Feminists likely will hate this song. The modern feminist movement fits Cube’s description of a bitch to a T. As he says, “Are you the kind that won’t blink? Cause you think your shit don’t stink?”

2. “Runnin’ Block” by Toby Keith
This humorous country ballad tells the story of a man who tries to do his friend a favor by agreeing to a double date, but soon finds out he got a lot more than he bargained for.. about 215lbs+ worth. After his buddy goes to get frisky with his date, Toby spends the entire time running away from a hefty chick who wants a lot more than a little smooch. In the age of “fat-shaming,” Feminazis will likely have more than than a few bones with this song.

3. “Gold Digger” by Kanye West ft. Jamie Foxx
In this little ditty set to the tune of Ray Charles’ “I Got a Woman,” Ye talks about the trials of being with a woman “Who ain’t messin’ with no broke niggas.” This is sure to unleash feminist rage in the age of third-wave feminism because Yeezy talks about a woman who takes advantage of a man for 18 years, spending child support money on her expensive lifestyle. After 18 years of supporting a kid the man thought was his, he thought the kid belonged to another man. Ye advises men not to be punks and get a prenup to avoid this kind of situation.

4. “Who’s Your Daddy”
Toby makes the list for a second time with this country toe-tapper about a woman who always comes running back to him after she keeps screwing up her love life. Needless to say, she knows who “butters her bread.” Feminists will get a little hot under the collar as they see men and the patriarchy as the source of all the world’s problems. In a world where feminists refuse to acknowledge the differences between men and women, I am sure they will call this song an assault on womanhood.

5. “Luck Be a Lady” by Frank Sinatra
I can hear it now. The way the “woke women” of the Left will rant and rave over the metaphors in this Big Band classic. Given the fact that feminists lost their minds last Christmas over “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” I can only imagine what they would say about the play on words in this tune.

“A lady never flirts with strangers
She’d have a heart, she’d be nice
A lady doesn’t wander all over the room
And blow on some other guys dice
Let’s keep this party polite
Never get out of my sight”

I mean, isn’t that clearly a reference to men sexualizing women? “We all know what Frankie means when he says to blow on other guys dice?” It’s just another symbol of the patriarchy treating women as property, they’d say. On second thought, I better shut up before I give them new material.

There you have it, folks. Five songs that will make feminists’ heads explode. Perhaps if the good men of the world are going to get bashed anyway, we might as well get in a few laughs while we are at it. What do you say, gentlemen?

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My friend John, a man in his late fifties, has recently raised this same question several times and is, I am unhappy to report, growing into something of a misogynist. He makes exceptions, one of them being my daughter, but in general he has come to despise “women’s rights,” most female politicians, the “we should believe all women” movement, and the idea that American women are oppressed.

Given the confusion between the sexes these days, I sympathize with John’s frustration. I’m not interested in joining the “He-Man Woman Haters Club” of Little Rascals fame, but I can offer a few thoughts on why John – and perhaps other men – are often baffled or angered by women.

We live in a time when more women than men are going to college, graduate school, law school, and medical school. We have more women than ever in Congress – “Yeah,” John snarls, “And how’s that working out?” – and in state and local government. Women have as many opportunities to succeed in the workplace and life as men.

Yet a good number of these females, particularly academics, chatter on about the patriarchy, “toxic masculinity,” and oppression. Two or three times a week I trip over someone complaining in the news that a certain man is sexist, or that women in America face daily discrimination.

The contradictions are obvious.

We have long heard that women want to be independent and make their own way in the world. Remember Helen Reddy’s 1971 hit song “I Am Woman”? Some women have long roared that men are unnecessary. Remember the old feminist slogan from the 1970s, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle?”

Noble aspirations, perhaps, yet in our colleges today we are seeing an increase in the number of “sugar babies,” female students who lease themselves and their sexual favors to wealthy “sugar daddies” to pay for their tuition and for certain luxuries. Apparently, some fish do need bicycles.

Once again, contradictions.

In many court cases – rape on college campuses, the accusations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh – we are told we should believe the charges brought by women because…well, because they are women.

But like men, women lie. Sometimes they are cajoled into lying, sometimes they lie as an act of vendetta, sometimes they lie for money. In a recent case, we have one of Jeffrey Epstein’s former under-age girls lying about having sex with Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. He and his attorneys called her out and demolished her testimony, as well as the testimony of another woman brought forward as his accuser.

Some Democrats seem to think that all women are alike. They think all women share the same fundamental interests and can’t understand why some of them vote Republican. After all, Democrats have declared themselves staunch advocates of women’s rights, claiming that they have traditionally empowered women and looked to their welfare. (Here they are either ignorant or their memory is faulty. If they would examine the historical record, they would discover American women won the right to vote because of Republicans.)

But not all women view the Democrats as knights on white horses. Where I live, for example, you’ll find a number of mothers who see these politicians as touting abortion, making war on the family, and despising stay-at-home moms. Why on earth would they vote for a party espousing causes and values contrary to their beliefs?

The major difficulty with Freud’s question, of course, lies with the question itself. Its imprecision guarantees confusion. Its breadth of scope makes reckoning the origins of the universe a simple task by comparison. Women are individuals, as different from one another as leaves on a tree, and men who attempt to reduce their nature to a universal formula will never succeed.

“What do women want?” will doubtless continue to cross the minds, if not the lips, of many men. Goaded by desire, love, frustration, or failure, we open our investigation, searching for clues to the conundrums of womanhood, some fingerprint, some bit of evidence, that will unveil the mysteries of the female heart and mind. Often, however, our sleuthing leads only to greater confusion. Like Churchill’s view of Russia, for many men the female of the species remains “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

—

This post ‘What Do Women Want?’ – It’s the Wrong Question to Ask was originally published on Intellectual Takeout by Jeff Minick.

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The new reboot of the classic 1970’s television show tanked at the box office, bringing in only $8.6 million on opening day and costing $50 million to make, according to The Blaze. This makes the film a bigger stinker than the trash can Oscar the Grouch lives in on Sesame Street. However, Banks did not waste the opportunity to blame her failure on the lack of trust in female directors in Hollywood.

When asked about the tremendous success of other action films with strong female characters in lead roles (such as those in the realm of comic books), Banks dismissed the big-screen smash hits as “feeding” the larger universe of male-dominated characters.

“So even though those are movies about women, they put them in the context of feeding the larger comic book world, so it’s all about, yes, you’re watching a Wonder Woman movie, but we’re setting up three other characters or we’re setting up Justice League,” Banks said in a recent interview with The Herald Sun.

Is it just me or does this sound like an elitist woman pouting because people chose not to see her movie? Newsflash, honeybun – if your movie didn’t do well, it’s not the fault of men in your industry. Use that as motivation to make a better movie that people actually want to see instead of pouting like a three-year-old little girl who wasn’t allowed to eat candy before supper.

The vast majority of moviegoers spend their dollars on films that actually capture their attention and entertain them in some way. When I go to the movies, I couldn’t care less about the gender, sex, religion or anything else pertaining to the personal lives of the cast and crew behind the film. I want a good movie that keeps me hooked from the beginning until the rolling of the credits. If people don’t want to spend their hard-earned money to see a film, anyone with a shred of intelligence would know they could have created a better story instead of blaming others for their own failures.

Perhaps the reason Bank’s version of “Charlie’s Angels” didn’t fly with moviegoers has nothing to do with the fact that it was directed by a woman and is simply because the public doesn’t want to see some rehashing of a 1970s TV show that has been done now for the fourth time. Hollywood has a horrible tendency to attempt to remake old movies that were successful in the past because they can’t seem to come up with new and exciting stories to tell. Maybe, just maybe, the flop of the new “Charlie’s Angels” film should incentivize writers and directors to come up with fresh ideas instead of using their own losses to claim victimhood status.

For the record, I love films with a strong female lead if the story grabs me. This is the reason I loved the new biopic on the life of Harriet Tubman, and the Wonder Woman film that made Gal Gadot a superstar. These stories were told well and stirred something inside of me. (Oh, by the way, Elizabeth – “Wonder Woman” is the only reason I continue to watch DC’s movies related to the “Justice League” because I was quite impressed with Gal Gadot’s representation of the character, not the other way around.)

If you are the empowered feminist that you would have us believe you are, make better movies that will move people to give you the recognition you so feel you deserve. This will make your successes much sweeter instead of pleading with your audience to see your film in the name of feminism. And pouting like a spoiled brat when they do not.

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While I am sure that my circle of male friends isn’t fully representative of the population of men at large, I was shocked to discover from my unscientific survey how many men have no clue about how to behave. Based on the combined responses of several women I trust, the number of men who say or do something offensive to a woman they don’t know on a dating app, almost right out of the gate, may be just shy of a majority.

And many a young woman can, if you ask her, relate tales of men making inappropriate remarks, shouting out of a car window as she walks down the street, whipping out his genitalia after one too many drinks, or being opportunistically crude at a coffee shop, even as she sits there with a very young child. (These were all stories I was told.) For some young women, these things seem to happen on a more or less monthly basis.

My recent conversations with female friends about the matter has led me to this question: what the hell is wrong with these men, and why are there so many of them?

What Has Happened to Men?

To me, this is not a question about sexual harassment. It’s a more fundamental one: an old-fashioned idea called manners. My female friends’ experiences with men surprised me because they have to put up with a lot more, and a lot more often, than I could have expected based on the evidence available to me as a result of my interactions with other men.

Even though I have robust views about not calling gittish and crass people “predators” or those on the receiving end of rude behaviors “victims”, it must be horrible to have to put up with so much boorishness. I don’t think I’d have the patience for it.

How have we let this happen?

If you’re male and reading this with the same limited appreciation of the matter as I had before I started asking my female friends to list examples of ill-mannered, sexually-loaded behavior, you may be skeptical. I urge you, however, to do the same thing as I have done and ask a cross-section of your female friends to give you examples of their personal anecdotes of such behavior from the last few months. They may well provide more than you expect.

Thinking on all of this, and being appalled by bad manners anywhere for any reason, I have started considering what I, as a man, should be saying to other men, if anything, about this problem. My long-held opinion (stated elsewhere) that Western culture is suffering a crisis in masculinity may well find sympathy among many of those who have been fervent in driving the #MeToo phenomenon, but I suspect my prescription for solving this crisis may be more controversial: I believe we need more masculinity, not less, and we need it because what the Louis C.K.s and the Weinsteins of this world have been doing is not an expression of masculinity in its true sense at all.

I’d like to see us turning to these men and asking them in a very disappointed tone, as opposed to a dramatic and scandalized one, “How pathetic are you — and why?” Because that question in that tone conveys the important message that their behavior doesn’t make them more manly; it makes them less so.

Toxic Masculinity Is the Problem, Not Simply Masculinity

Scientifically trained, I generally take care to get out of my own subjective way in my political articles, but this time, I’ll make an exception and happily admit that what follows is a subjective, almost intuitive suggestion offered in the hope of inviting constructive discussion.

The true masculine, or the “sacred masculine” if you prefer, is kind, honest, controlled, disciplined, heroic, protective, strong, rational, and even clever. Throwing out the baby of masculinity with the bathwater of disrespect is absolutely the last thing we need to be doing. Telling men that masculinity is inherently flawed or dangerous is to tell a lie born of misdiagnosis. The moral vacuum in which Weinstein and Franken and others of their ilk operate can only be filled by a celebratory masculinity that is held up as something to aspire to.

If there is such a thing as a spiritual law, none is more certain than, “What is focused on is made bigger,” so let us define that highest version of masculinity as an invitation to men — a north star, if you will, to guide them as they interact with others. That would enable those aspects of men that are gendered, sexual, and desirous to be integrated into the highest versions of who they are, rather than denied or pathologized only to be expressed in distorted ways that can, indeed, reasonably be called “toxic.”

Treating toxic masculinity with real masculinity and pointing to the difference between the two has the benefit of engaging the irrepressible male ego on the side of good, of aligning maleness with manners rather than against them.

Perhaps most importantly, a culturally normalized notion of proud and positive masculinity would allow mothers once again to be able to say to their sons, “This is how you treat a woman, and, in so doing, this is how to be a man.” Boys want to be men, so we can surely only improve them by appealing to that desire rather than suppressing it and thereby creating a vacuum to be filled by a distorted and hollow replacement.

Attention: Men. Don’t Be Stupid.

Shocking as they are, it’s not all the male bad manners that astonished me most about the stories I’ve recently heard. It’s male stupidity. After all, if I were a man who wants any kind of sexual satisfaction or affirmation from a woman, and the most sophisticated play I had was to shout out of a car window, rub up against her on a train, or ask her if I can masturbate in front of her, then you’d hope that I’d eventually work out that my method isn’t all that effective.

How deficient, one may ask, does a person have to be to be unable to assess the results of his actions against his goals, especially as the results (or lack thereof) repeat themselves over and over? Indeed, a need for sexual affirmation or activity that is so great that they would cause me to leave my manners at the front door should, even if I were a sociopath, motivate me to start collecting the data. (Rationality is supposed to be a “masculine trait” too, isn’t it?) How long, then, before the thought hits that being rude to every second woman that I find faintly attractive isn’t getting me what I want from them?

In reaction to that level of stupidity alone, I can’t help but feel that men should be asking other men, “What is this nonsense?”

That would be an approach to making better men that makes more of true masculinity, not less of it. It’s an approach that says to those who are toxic in their approaches to women, “That’s the opposite of masculinity. That’s what you do when you’re not a man. That’s what you do when you haven’t got the basics.”

Holding the Feminine and the Truly Masculine Sacred

I love the polarity that exists between the masculine and feminine. Long before #MeToo, I was writing that no one benefits when men can’t be men because masculinity itself has almost become taboo. Men who can’t be, and feel like, real men cannot give women the pleasure of feeling like real women.

I stand by all of that, but when I first wrote it, I was missing something: there are a bunch of men out there on dating apps and shouting out of car windows who actually are making women feel very much like women — but not the kind of women they want to feel like being. You could say, rather, that toxic male approaches are causing women to have a toxic experience of their own femininity. How dare we do that to something so exquisite and delicious?

So, my message to men who are disrespecting women is that you are making it harder for the rest of us. By giving women good reason to be wary of any kind of male approach, you’re making all the women out there skeptical of me and the decent examples of my gender. And I’m not ok with that.

But I also have a message for mothers. Mom, it’s okay to make your son a man. It’s okay to use that word. Only once you’ve used that word can you turn around and say, “This behavior isn’t masculine; it’s pathetic. And by the way, son, if you actually want to get with an attractive woman, here’s how not to do it. Don’t disrespect her; don’t throw crude one-liners out of a car window, and don’t send a picture of your genitals to her on a dating app. If you want to get the attractive women, the smart women, the kind of women you’re going to enjoy — and you should — then why don’t you learn a little bit about them? Indeed, why don’t you learn a little bit about the difference between them and you?”

And that last piece is so important because I have a sense (and I could be wrong) that many people who have been pushing the #MeToo phenomenon hard are of the more third-wave-feminist persuasion, wanting to collapse that distinction between men and women. (It’s all socialization, they say.) But I’m suggesting the exact opposite approach to solving the problem out of which #MeToo has arisen.

Why not tell our boys what’s great and beautiful about masculinity so that once we’ve built them up in what they are, they have no need to feel threatened or intimidated by learning about the feminine other — that other that will drive them through life in more ways than they will ever consciously realize? Let’s spend more time promoting models of positive masculinity than on telling guys, young and old, that, and why, we’re all awful. (We’re not.) Let’s talk up the good alpha-males: those who are comfortable in their masculinity — assertive while respectful, confident while polite, ambitious while kind. They exist in all areas of life. The next time you’re about to talk about Al Franken’s shenanigans, how about talking instead about one of those real men, who gets what he wants through respect? And draw the contrast between them explicitly.

Spoiler Alert: Sex Is Amazing. So Seek It Properly.

Then, as we start celebrating healthy, robust masculinity, let’s not slip back into thinking that the problem we are trying to solve has anything much to do with sex. As Oscar Wilde famously said, “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.”

That applies here and now — albeit not in quite the way Wilde meant it.

The unacceptable sexual behaviors of men who exhibit toxic masculinity are rooted in something to do with power, but not primarily in the conscious exertion of sexual power over another. Rather, their disrespectful treatment of women for a sexual prize (which they invariably fail to win) is reflective of a lack of inner power as men, which leaves them resorting to aggressive behavior and exploiting the immediate superficial and circumstantial power that exists by virtue of a professional relationship or particular social or economic context.

Men shouldn’t behave disrespectfully toward women not because there’s anything wrong with their sexuality, their desire, or their masculinity. No; they shouldn’t do it because no one should disrespect anyone, ever. Period. End of story.

We have to take care, then, that we don’t misdiagnose the disease just because it is more easily seen in certain situations than in others: disrespect from men is disproportionately observed in the sexual domain because the male sexual imperative is never really turned off, and it necessarily manifests in ways that are directly seen and experienced by women (assuming the men are straight).

Women, please help us good men police our own by talking up positive masculinity — the masculinity that you want more of. Celebrate the polarity between your femininity and the masculinity of the men you like. Tell us that it’s ok to be sexually assertive and thoroughly masculine — but only in the right context. And explain to us that that context always involves the prior establishment of mutual respect, a sense of safety, and trust. We are basic creatures. You, ladies, are gatekeepers. So let us know that respect and social competence will open that gate much more easily than will crude attempts to bash it down.

In short, don’t ask us not to be men. Ask us to be real men.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

The post The Cure for Toxic Masculinity Is Real Masculinity appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

What better time to talk about the need for genuine masculinity and the problems that have reared their ugly heads as a result of the lack of real examples of manhood?

Feminists, today, argue that all the ills of Western society are a direct result of what they call “toxic masculinity”, and that men and women are nearly identical in every aspect of life. As a result of this new “enlighted” mentality, masculinity, as with many of the values and ideas that birthed the modern Western World, must be sacrificed at the altar of equality to rectify the social ills of today’s world.

I would agree with feminists that there is a dark side to male behavior, but the issue doesn’t lie with masculinity itself, but how the traits that make up a man are channeled and used.  The Blaze’s Allie Stukey made this point very well in her video for Prager U.

Keeping this at the forefront of our minds, I would like to talk a little bit about the two men who taught me what it means to be a man, and played a vital role in molding the individual whose article you are currently reading.

My dad and my paternal grandfather (whom I call Pawpaw Bill) have taught me by their example, and sometimes their words, how to channel masculine qualities in a way that is beneficial to myself, my family, and society as a whole.

I learned from these men how to channel the natural aggressiveness in young men to fight for the ideas and people that I love. That aggressiveness, if directed in the wrong way, could lead men to take advantage of those who are weaker. But thanks to my dad and my Pawpaw, I learned how to chase my dreams tirelessly, and both men have encouraged me greatly along the way.

Both men taught me by their own relationships how women should be loved, respected and valued for the beauty of their differences, and that those differences should be celebrated, not shamed or lessened in any way. It is by their examples that I learned the core values of my faith and the greatest love I have ever known.

These men have seen me at my best and my worst and have loved me unconditionally in spite of my many flaws. They have put into practice the Apostle Paul’s words in his first letter to the Church at Corinth when he said, in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8  (AMPC)

“Love endures long and is patient and kind; love never is envious nor boils over with jealousy, is not boastful or vainglorious, does not display itself haughtily.
It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God’s love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong].
It does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right andtruth prevail.
Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening].
Love never fails [never fades out or becomes obsolete or comes to an end]. As for prophecy ([a]the gift of interpreting the divine will and purpose), it will be fulfilled and pass away; as for tongues, they will be destroyed and cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away [it will lose its value and be superseded by truth].”

I want to thank my Pawpaw Bill and my father for teaching me how to be a man. If men had better examples of masculinity such as I have, boys would know how to become men, and women would know from the love of their fathers what kind of qualities to look for in a husband.

The natural byproduct of more of this healthy masculinity would cure the cancer of neo-feminism.

The post A Father’s Day Response to “Toxic Masculinity” appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Meryl Streep, highly acclaimed actress and outspoken progressive, said in a public interview recently: “We hurt our boys by calling something toxic masculinity… because women can be pretty [expletive] toxic.”

“It’s toxic people,” Streep went on to say, “We’re all on the boat together. We’ve got to make it work.”

The 69-year-old actress is known for several portrayals of villainesses, including the witch in the film version of the musical “Into the Woods.” Given these roles and the deep study they involve, Streep likely has sound insight into what feminine evil involves.

Fairy tales, such as “Into the Woods,” feature a high ratio of horrible female characters, something rather uncomfortable for modern people. This inclines some feminist academics to claim these fairy tales are merely slanderous, misogynist propaganda. What they forget is that the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Anderson did not compose these fairy tales; rather, they simply transcribedthem.

Ethnographers trace some fairy tales back as far as 9,000 years. In all likelihood, it wasn’t just fathers and grandfathers passing on the lore, but mothers and grandmothers as well. If such was the case, then why would women persist in frightening their own children with tales of evil women?

As a mother myself, the only time I would purposely scare my children is for their own good.

The capacity for evil in men has always been self-evident. As children, our ancestors would have seen their fathers’ towering size and their strong muscles and hands, perhaps bloody from butchering their dinner or carrying weapons home from war. These signs gave the simple message that men are dangerous.

This was not a bad thing. Indeed, there must have been some comfort in the thought of one’s father being dangerous if you were confident in his love for you.

The lesson that children might need spelled out for them, however, was not so much that men could be dangerous but that women could be.

Apparently our ancient grandmothers thought it was useful for children to understand that not all women – be they beautiful queens or doddering old crones – are to be trusted all the time. These fairy stories would have been useful to also teach young girls to have some respect for themselves, recognizing that they were capable of evil and should beware of becoming one of these negative examples.

Modern research affirms this view. That women can be as aggressive as men, is a point noted in “The Boy Crisis” and “The Coddling of the American Mind.” However, women usually display aggressiveness in more subtle, covert, and passive ways.

There are many areas where women rule, such as the educational and medical fields, but there is one area which is perhaps most consequential: a mother with her infant. The CDC has reported that 54 percent of physical abuse and neglect of children is perpetrated by females. A man must exert quite a bit of force to subject an adult female, but a woman may only have to ignore an infant to create devastation.

Perhaps the notion of “the witch” in fairy tale literature – Ursula, Maleficent, and Mother Gothel – is born not from sixteenth century misogynistic propaganda, but from our own, much more ancient and universal, primordial horror of what it must be like to have the fragility of a baby suffer mistreatment at the hand of an all powerful, malevolent mother figure.

But, the political conversation says, any bad behavior of women is due to the previous bad behavior of men. Perhaps that is true to some extent. But if so, couldn’t it also be true that the evil behavior of some men could have origins in the evil behavior of some women? Especially that of a negligent or malevolent mother whose power compared to her infant is of mythic proportions?

Or are we going to insist that the responsibility for the evil women do comes from men and the responsibility for the evil men do comes from themselves? Is that equality?

Perhaps it’s time we stop pretending that men have a monopoly on toxicity.

The post Is Meryl Streep Right in Saying That Women Can Be Pretty Toxic? appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Such was the response I recently received from a woman after she read a recent article of mine about families, plummeting American birth rate, and marriage.

Soon after receiving her email, I stumbled across Rod Dreher’s “The Agony & Hope of Christian Courtship,” an online article in which he discusses a column by Anna Hitchings, an Australian writer lamenting the dearth of available men who were “churchgoing, single and worldly wise,” with that last term meaning socially adjusted. Hitchings writes that men “seemingly do not understand what it is to be a man anymore.” She then applauds figures like Jordan Peterson, who are “actively promoting qualities that are sorely lacking in our society, such as personal responsibility, honesty, and integrity.”

In his column, Dreher adds a comment by a reader, Steve:

A woman asked my friend, an awesome, 40-year-old man of God who wants kids and a wife, if he believed in egalitarianism vs complementarianism, and when he said the latter, she wished him a happy life. That’s the culture now and that mentality has seeped into the church. So it’s no wonder why women in my congregation complain the men aren’t asking them out — we’re not interested in having to argue our worth and leadership in a relationship.

Putting aside Christianity, few today would deny that male-female relationships among young adults are fraught with suspicion, discord, false hopes, and shattered expectations. I know a dozen women like Anna Hitchings who echo her sentiments, namely, that they and their friends have trouble finding men who are honest, responsible, and know how to engage socially.

But as Steve points out, men also face challenges in finding the right woman.

What has happened?

Since the 1960s, our society has undergone a sea change regarding marriage and family. Schools find time for sex education but not for teaching the values of partnership, commitment, and obligation. Nor does our culture endeavor to restore marriage and family, institutions once considered the building blocks of a healthy society. Today our technology, the sexual revolution, and in some quarters, the antipathy toward men and marriage, have severely damaged the nuclear family.

Let’s look at just one of these changes.

The women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s stressed equality of opportunity in education and the workplace. Young women were encouraged to go to college, win a degree, take their place in the workplace, and break the glass ceiling.

All well and good.

Unfortunately, this quest for equality has taken a different turn. Our popular culture – movies, television, children’s books – has demeaned men while elevating women, an indoctrination begun in pre-school. One small example: pick up almost any of the Berenstain Bear books, aimed at kids three to seven years of age, and you’ll find Mama Bear portrayed as flawless and wise, Papa Bear as a doofus. This propaganda occurs in movie theaters, in television shows where Dad is a guy too dumb to change a light bulb, in the media, in textbooks attacking the “patriarchy,” and in classrooms from kindergarten through graduate school. More recently, some teachers and commentators go so far as to preach toxic masculinity, as if manhood was a piece of poisonous waste. We are raising our girls to be aggressive and independent; we are raising our boys to be… well, more like girls.

In her 2017 post, “Camille Paglia: Neo Feminism Teaching Women to Live ‘In a Permanently Juvenile Condition,’” Annie Holmquist looks at what Paglia, a feminist writer and provocateur, thinks of this second-wave feminism: “What I am saying throughout my work is that girls who are indoctrinated to see men not as equals but as oppressors and rapists are condemned to remain in a permanently juvenile condition for life. They have surrendered their own personal agency to a poisonous creed that claims to empower women but has ended by infantilizing them.”

It gets worse. By buying into this propaganda, some women now regard females as superior to males. They engage in the tribalism endemic in our time. Like the male chauvinists of yore, they crack jokes in public about the stupidity of men, make sexist comments, or disparage males, all with no pushback. Meanwhile, men risk being accused of harassment simply for complimenting a woman on her appearance.

Given such an anti-male culture, what sort of men are women expecting?

As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man, “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise… We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

Young adults, male and female, who are searching for love, commitment, and marriage, who want a home and children, deserve our sympathy. They are the unwitting victims of a culture whose values have gone drastically awry.

And until we recognize we are on the wrong road, these same young people must expect a bumpy ride.

This post The Consequences of an Anti-Male Culture was originally published on Intellectual Takeout by Jeff Minick.

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