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It shouldn’t be confusing. After all, manliness is straightforward and direct. Femininity, on the other side of the great sexual divide, is notably mysterious and inscrutable.
Amd yet, our current converaation is riddled with confusion . Decades worth of feminist ranting about male chauvinist pigs and toxic masculinity has confused the issue..If a man proposes to protect women and children, to provide for his family, he will, in some quarters, be denounced for trying to diminish and weaken women. If he wants to protect and provide he is imply that women cannot do it themselves.
On the one hand, American men have not not been winning too many wars lately. The generation that emerged victorious in World War II is no longer with us. The Vietnam Generation was not a martial success.
Some have suggested that America has even lost the habit of winning wars.
Moreover, women today insist that they do not want some man taking care of them. They tell us that they want, above all else, to have their own careers, to pay their own way.
It seems like a good idea. Yet, in practice, it has produced an epidemic of broken homes. If she does not want you to be the man of the family, why stay with the family? If you do not have an honorable role within the family, why not decamp for warmer climes?
Men become men by competing in the arena, in the marketplace or the battlefield. Since they are doing it for others, for women and children, they do not see it as a form of self-actualization or self-expression.
Women, on the contrary, have traditionally defined themselves by their work in the home. They are the queens of inner space and value emotion and feeling, over the ability to play games,and to follow rules.
What matters in the arena is that you follow the rules, that you play the game according to the rules. Sportsmanship prevails in that world outside of the home.
Traditional manliness was defined in terms of gentility, of the gentleman. This was the case in Confucian thinking and in Victorian practice.
Again, the role involved following codes of good conduct. It did not just matter that you won, but that you played the game correctly, following the roles. Cheaters were not real men.
But then, when men fail at their primary tasks they often resort to what is called machismo. They cannot command respect for their achievements, so they insist on imposing their will on those who are weaker.
Machismo is theatrical display. And yet, it produces obnoxious behaviors, even what is called the will to power. If a macho man cannot receive respect he will often force others to respect him, by using jos physicality.
So, we have strong empowered women struggling against more powerful men. Perhaps they will find a way to balance the powers, but that is easier said than done,
7 comments:
All depends on where you put the commas. "Woman, without her, man is nothing." "Woman without her man, is nothing."
Through the lens of transcendental critique, we discover that traditional gender roles manifest as socially constructed phenomena, their essentialist categorizations collapsing under the weight of pure reason. This collapse reveals a complex dialectic of power dynamics, wherein the imperative of power balance between genders emerges as a pragmatic maxim, though one that requires grounding in moral law rather than empirical observation alone.
I have no idea what you just said, Anonymous, but have a nice day!
"Since [men] are [competing] for others, for women and children, they do not see it as a form of self-actualization or self-expression."
This is a brilliant insight that unfortunately everyone misses. (Except James Brown, of course; see "It's A Man's Man's Man's World", 1966.) Meanwhile, feminists and "woke" males try to deny its essential truth, and even manage to bury it for a generation or two. But in time it always resurfaces.
Actually, what Anonymous is trying to say is there is a manic-depressive element in modern relationships due to the retreat of suppressed libido into the realm of ultra-conscious mysticism which has resulted in the atavistic reversion to heroes motivated by so-called base impulses. On the other hand, it could be a simple unconscious reversal in protest against Victorian Romanticism.
"...it could be a simple unconscious reversal in protest against Victorian Romanticism."
Aka..."Will to power" as in "*Trying* to Say"...aren't post-modernism and overpriced college degrees grand entertainment!?
Frankly the comment is pure gibberish. How was the gibberish generated? First, I told an AI model to summarize Stuart's article, but using the writing style of Immanuel Kant and to make it sound "gay". It then came back with a flaming response which was pretty bad, so I told it to make it less gay and add some masochism and that is what you see.
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