She Digs Masculine Men

When I saw that today's Prager University video was going to be on masculinity, I braced for another video telling men that they should get married. We last addressed the Prager U videos doing that in this entry.

Let's look at the transcript they provided. (If you want to comment on the video, you can do so on YouTube in addition to commenting below.)

Rape, murder, war—they all have one thing in common: Men.

Taken by itself, this sentence ignores that women rape and women murder. And why does war happen? Sure, territory, resources, power... but why do the men engaged in war want those things? Quite often, a large part of it has to do with women. Women are attracted to men with money, power, and fame. War is one way men get those things.

Aggression, violence, ambition unchecked by conscience—all the stuff of “toxic masculinity,” right? 

And, the solution is obvious: make men less toxic. 

Make men less masculine. 

Make men more like women. 

But I’m here to tell you that this way of thinking is not only wrong, it’s dangerous.

Good.

Here’s why: When you try to make men more like women, you don’t get less “toxic masculinity,” you get more. 

Why? Because bad men don’t become good when they stop being men; they become good when they stop being bad.

Still good.

Aggression, violence, and unbridled ambition can’t be eliminated from the male psyche; they can only be harnessed. And when they are harnessed, they are tools for good, not for harm. 

The same masculine traits that bring destruction also defeat tyranny. The traits that foster greed also build economies. The traits that drive men to take foolish risks also drive men to take heroic risks. 

The answer to toxic masculinity isn’t less masculinity; it’s better masculinity. And we know what that looks like.

Still good.

It’s a young man opening the door for a girl on their first date. It’s a father working long hours to provide for his family.

Sigh. I just knew that was coming!
Door opening. I do this, because I was raised to do it and I have not been compelled to stop. Why did this become customary? Without researching it, I can think of several possible reasons. Some doors used to be difficult to open. Women used to carry things like babies and fans and hand purses, so their hands were less likely to be free. But that's opening doors in general. I wouldn't advise most young men bother to date, at least not in the modern sense. My best advice would be to steer clear of "girls" entirely. But if a young man wants to fornicate, he doesn't really need to go on a date to do that. He can simply drop in for a hookup at her place, and she's going to have to open her own door, unless she leaves it unlocked.

Providing. Yes, a man with kids should provide for them, unless it truly works out better that his wife is earning the income and he is home taking care of the kids. But my best advice to most men is not to even get married, and without marriage, they probably shouldn't be having children for whom they need to provide. It's interesting that "working long hours" is presented as positive here when some sellers of "marriage-and-family" chastise men for doing so, and many women use it as an excuse to have affairs or divorce.

It’s a soldier risking his life to defend his country.

Hey, women do that now, too.

The growing problem in today’s society isn’t that men are too masculine; it’s that they’re not masculine enough. When men embrace their masculinity in a way that is healthy and productive, they are leaders, warriors and heroes. When they deny their masculinity, they run away from responsibilities, leaving destruction and despair in their wake. 

The consequences can be seen everywhere. 

One in four fathers now lives apart from his children.

And how many had little choice in the matter? Plenty!!! It's called: unilateral no-fault divorce, false claims of domestic violence, child custody decisions in court, parental alienation, and restraining orders.

And children who grow up without a dad are generally more depressed than their peers who have a mother and a father. They are at far greater risk for incarceration, teen pregnancy and poverty. Seventy-one percent of high school dropouts are fatherless.

This is tricky. As a father, I'd like to believe that my presence will prevent in my children depression, criminality, teen pregnancy, poverty, and dropping out of school. But how much of this can really be attributed to a father's presence? It's what we have to consider over and over again: correlation is not necessarily indicative of causation.

If mother or father is depressed, isn't suicide or divorce more likely? And can't causes of depression be inherited? So maybe it isn't the absence of a father that causes depression, but the depression the father had that contributed to his absence was passed down to his children? I'm married to and living with the mother of my children. One of my kids has already been diagnosed with depression, which was likely inherited by my wife. My kid is depressed. Even though I'm there. Furthermore, the actions of this child have prompted people to call the police on two separate occasions.

Children without their father around are less likely to have connections that will keep them out of prison.

Pregnancy... sure, we can grant this one.

Poverty... Again, which is the cart and which is the horse? Of course is seems to make sense that at least in some cases, having a second parent reduces the chances of being in poverty because both parents can earn money. But you certainly also have cases where women from poor families have nothing going on and pop out babies without a steady relationship because that's just what her family has done for generations, which is one reason they are poor. Also, can't we expect that single mothers are likely to ask Uncle Sam for money, and in order to do so, they have to claim poverty?

Dropping out. Sure, without your old man kicking your butt and telling you to get to school, it's easier to drop out. Without dad around to pay for college, a kid might question the point of bothering to complete high school. Also, in some subcultures, education isn't valued enough and there is pressure to instead get a job and bring in money when dad isn't there.

Again, I'd like to believe that my presence as a father is going to prevent these negative indicators. But one we already know has failed. And we can't say, for everything, that it is the presence of the father that has had the positive effect because it is also possible that the conditions that contributed to the father not being there contributed to the negative indicators.

“Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives…family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation.” 

That was said by then-Senator Barack Obama in 2008. 

“If we are honest with ourselves,” he went on, “we’ll admit that…too many fathers are…missing from too many lives and too many homes.”

Well he would know, having been raised without his father. And we all know that President Obama wound up in prison, dropped out of school, got pregnant as a teen, and never amounted to anything. And he certainly didn't stay around to raise his own daughters, did he? Oh, wait, he did! So much for cycles.

As much as we try to deny the need for real, masculine strength in society, there’s no denying its necessity. Healthy families and strong communities depend on the leadership and bravery of good men.

Many lesbian couples would beg to disagree, and our own Supreme Court has indicated that fatherless marriages/families are no different than ones with fathers, so much so that the sameness demanded state laws and a federal law be overturned.

Yet, the current trend is to feminize young men in the hopes of achieving some utopian notion of equality and peace. And it starts at the earliest ages. In the school classroom, boys are invariably “the problem.” On the playground, aggressive games like dodgeball have long been banished. We tell young men that their intrinsic desire to compete is wrong. Everybody gets a trophy. Don’t run up the score. This anti-male tilt continues on through higher education and into the workplace. It has created millions of tentative men, unhappy women, and confused boys and girls.

Agreed.

Here’s a secret that every woman knows: Women want real men—men they can count on and, yes, look up to.

That's what they say. But who are they likely to hook up with when they are most fertile, hmmm? Yes, they want a "real man" (I've already addressed that phrase in the previous entry) when they've accumulated debts and realize that being an aging woman can be expensive and they are rapidly losing the ability to attract the men they've been enjoying. But again, who do they hook up with when they're at their hottest?

No amount of feminist theory will change that. I don’t know any woman, at any age, who is attracted to a passive man who looks to her to be his provider, protector and leader.

Oh, there are many women who want passive man, at least for a while. It's the "provider, protector" in the sentence that makes the difference. Of course most women like to have someone who'll be a bodyguard who pays them.

Every woman I know wants a strong, responsible man.

That's what you think, or what they've told you. But what have they done? How many of them have endless stories of the irresponsible men with whom they've had sex, even had children with? Those irresponsible men turned them on!

That’s not a consequence of a social construct or cultural pressure—it’s innate.

If she wants to have children, yes, that's the tendency, after she's "had her fun".

The devaluation of masculinity won’t end well because feminine, passive men don’t stop evil.

You still need to convince the misandrists that masculine, strong men aren't causing the evil. You see, in the misandrists' minds, there would be no evil to stop in the first place if men were feminine and passive. And you haven't done much to convince them otherwise.

Passive men don’t defend, protect or provide.

Plenty of passive men provide. They go to their cubicles or their checkout stands, earn money, and passively allow a woman to spend it. They passively pass up spending time doing other things because a woman told them to come home.

Passive men don’t lead. Passive men don’t do the things we have always needed men to do for society to thrive. 

In his book, The Abolition of Man, English social philosopher C.S. Lewis writes about this problem. He describes the tension “between cerebral man and visceral man.” “By his intellect,” Lewis explains, man “is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.” 

We need both. Take away one, and you’re left with a man who’s either weak or wicked. And in a world of wickedness, weak men are nothing more than enablers of wicked men.
Rape, murder, war—they all have two things in common: bad men who do the raping, murdering, and warring; and weak men who won’t stop them. We need good men who will.

It’s not masculinity that’s toxic. It’s the lack of it. 

I’m Allie Stuckey for Prager University.

I'll put it here again:

You still need to convince the misandrists that masculine, strong men aren't causing the evil. You see, in the misandrists' minds, there would be no evil to stop in the first place if men were feminine and passive. And you haven't done much to convince them otherwise.

Did she really not see the flaw? She's blaming men for raping, murdering, and warring. If men were made passive, they wouldn't do those things. She needed to argue that it is impossible to make all men passive enough for that, and the best way to counter those things is to also have good men who aren't passive.

Otherwise she should have stuck entirely with leadership and building economies. But as we've seen, women can lead, women can invent and create and sell and trade and manage and be CEOs. In fact, I'm seeing a lot of people insisting we need more women leaders and entrepreneurs and CEOs.

I get it. She finds strong men sexy. And I don't know anything about her personal life, but she probably wants to get/keep a man who is earning more than she is. I just don't see this video as being persuasive to misandrists or anyone buying into what misandrists are saying. It does, however, provide another voice pointing out how terribly men and boys are being treated, which is all the more reason to embrace the MGTOW mindset of being independent and protecting yourself.