Heroic Men in Aurora, Colorado

Hannah Rosin wants to know what it means that three men in Aurora, Colorado took bullets to protect their girlfriends.

She answers correcty that these men were manifesting a primal male instinct: to protect women.

In her words:

In the movies the Dark Knight does not always save his lady, but in the Aurora theater the story unfolded differently. The male instinct to rescue and protect kicked in the way it does in less complicated superhero tales.

And also:

Throwing your body in front of your girlfriend when people all around you are getting shot is an instinct that's basic….

This implies that anyone who believes that the male instinct to protect women is a social construct is wrong. Not just wrong, but at war with human nature.

Also, those who had previously believed that men were fundamentally abusive toward women might now want to revise their views.

The male instinct to protect means that female life is more valuable than male life. Thus, men fight wars, first, because they are intrinsically stronger, and second, because they are more easily replaceable.

The concept is based on the Darwinian calculus of reproduction.

Rosin is correct to call it instinct, but she enters a more murky territory when she seems to be surprised that it has not gone the way of that other important male instinct, the breadwinner instinct.

Writing about a woman who is describing her heroic boyfriend, Rosin gets lost in a peculiar feminist reverie.

In Rosin’s words:

She [the woman] attributed that to his undying heroism, but it may also have to do with the fact that he, like a few guys in the theater, was working at Target and surely not making enough money to support one family, much less two. Young, meanwhile, had just finished getting her veterinarian degree, becoming the latest in an onslaught of women who have taken over that lucrative profession, which was not very long ago dominated by men.   

In Aurora Colorado and in many communities across America men are no longer the breadwinners. They earn less, have less glowing career prospects, and are reduced to working at Target [presumably a menial job] while their girlfriends become veterinarians.

Rosin seems to see the male instinct to protect women as a quaint relic, the last piece of manly behavior that feminism has not managed to subvert.

When the subject is discussed, most people say that the role of the male breadwinner was damaged by shrinking manufacturing and by outsourcing.

And yet, the result correlates so well with feminist ideology that you might be forgiven for believing that American culture, beginning with the educational establishment, has systematically undermined and repressed men in favor of women.

It’s certainly not an equality issue. It’s about favoring one group over another. And then wondering why so many men abandon their children.

Recently, Susan Gregory Thomas reported on the phenomenon of the female breadwinner in the Wall Street Journal.

In her words:

Perhaps because men of this generation were raised in the wake of the women's movement, a culture that introduced values of equality, many of them don't seem to have a problem with their wives earning more than they do.

There's one caveat, though: The men want their own salaries alone to be enough, in theory, to float the family. When they can't meet this standard, they can feel enraged, shamed, explosive. And their wives often feel resentful and pressured.

Men do not have a problem with women making more money if they themselves make enough money to qualify as breadwinners.

If not, they become hostile and abusive, “enraged” and “explosive.”

In other cases they simply walk away from their responsibilities to their families. They learned in school that women need men like fish need bicycles, so, why should they stick around when they are neither needed nor wanted.

Needless to say, it’s a volatile mix.

The meaning, however, is clear. In a world where feminist ideology has succeeded in depriving men of the role of provider, this fact, in and of itself, makes men more hostile toward women.

In a world that feminism wants to create there will be more, not less, male hostility toward women.

But, despite it all, in time of trouble a man will fall back on his instincts to protect his woman.