State of Thursday: MOTHERS OF MEN
If you are a woman in a man’s life and he’s not doing what he should be doing, get after his ass.
Greetings, Dear Reader,
I’m going to keep today’s short because my schej is a bit tight this morning.
Let’s get into it …
MOTHERS OF MEN
Women in Spartan culture were revered because becoming a Spartan warrior literally started from birth. Only a fine woman could possibly give birth to a Spartan, the thinking went.
Mothers were the first “drill masters,” who spent at least the first five years of their sons’ lives teaching courage, discipline, duty. The phrase that’s echoed throughout history since is “return with your shield, or on it,” a feminine decree that succinctly laid out male expectations.
Our boys have recently fallen by the wayside. If you’ve been paying much attention, this isn’t news to you.
Professor Brad Wilcox at UVA posted a startling, enlightening, and finally hopeful tweet yesterday.
“My female students at the University of Virginia are worried about the state of the opposite sex,” he said. “The women who take my ‘sociology of family’ class tell of brothers living in their parents’ basements, boyfriends hooked on pornography and male peers who don’t pull their weight in group projects. Most troublingly, many of these women say they have never been asked on a date. Their voices are part of a rising chorus expressing concern about the falling fortunes of our boys and men.”
Much has been said about the deteriorating state of men. Again, none of this should be new to you.
In previous editions of SOTD, I laid out how over-feminization of our culture contributed in some ways to this rapid decline in male outcomes and male development. Specifically, “toxic” or “suicidal” empathy.
You’ve heard it before: There’s been a ruthless attack on maleness, masculinity, and so on. HR departments run amok. Demands that men ask permission for every little thing, from holding a hand to opening a door, have reduced masculine agency to a bureaucratic, ever-penalizing obstacle course. The beautiful mystery of spontaneity, that leap of faith, the risk and reward, the lesson of many failures that pave the way to the success that actually counts; there is no room for any of it.
It’s no wonder they’ve retreated from public spaces to basements and porn.
Inside Wilcox’s statement is a seed of hope, however, in the phrase “my female students.”
As much as I believe that we are free individuals ultimately responsible for our own outcomes, when it comes to relations between the sexes, toxicity in one leads to toxicity in the other. Failure in one, failure in the other.
I don’t look, for example, at the growing participation rate of young women on OnlyFans as solely their moral failure. Truth is, I don’t even look at it as a majority of their failure.
Where are your fathers? Brothers? Where are your husbands? When women en masse fall into such basic moral depravity, it isn’t the women I turn to, it’s the men. Strong, competent, cognizant men would never allow for it.
He started off, “My female students … are worried.”
This to me represents a bit of a turning point. When women close to these men stand up and say, enough is enough, perhaps it’s actually going to be enough. Nothing rouses the men in the room like the exhortation of a matriarch. When mothers, sisters, potential brides start making basic demands again, my guess is men would be apt to listen.
“Return with your shield, or on it.”
Nobody wants to fall short of such a simple bar.
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I started off in a basement, actually, 20 years ago.
When my mother finally grew weary of it, she marched me into the recruiters’ office herself. My two brothers followed. She’s now looking down on the three of us, a writer, an engineer, and an active-duty Marine.
A mother of men.
We need more of them. So here’s my challenge to you, Dear Reader.
If you are a woman in a man’s life and he’s not doing what he should be doing, get after his ass.
That’s it for the free portion of today’s State of the Day.
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