Category: Men and Women

Too Few Good Men

by WFTD, posted in Culture, Men and Women, politics

Language warning.

“[I]f they proceeded any further not knowing where the suspect was at, they could’ve been shot, they could’ve been killed.” So they didn’t. They chickened out. (Related. More.)

In the background of the gun control debate, and many other political debates, is the implicit assumption that there will always be enough “good guys” around—and they are mostly guys—to fix our stuff and keep us safe when crap hits the fan. However fashionable it may have been to hate on cops two years ago, we all still want someone to pick up if we have to call 911. Especially if our kids’ safety is involved.

But it turns out we’ve begun to exhaust our supply of good men. Feminism hasn’t helped, perpetual war hasn’t helped, the opioid crisis hasn’t helped, “Progress” in general hasn’t helped. Many men are shirking their duties as men, precisely because the payoff for being a man just isn’t there. Boys will be boys, but many men will only be men if you give them good reason to be. Our society hasn’t given most men such reason, and so here we are.

But we need good men. In particular, we need courage, the paradigmatically masculine virtue. The problem is that we’ve jacked up our courage supply chains even worse than our baby formula ones. And that problem cannot be fixed by anything less than a civilizational reset.

Lewis:

And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. … In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

We call cops pigs and expect them to risk their lives in active shooter situations. We laugh at masculinity and are shocked to find dead children in our midst.

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At Last She Understood It

by WFTD, posted in Art, Literature, Men and Women

‘Éowyn, why do you tarry here, and do not go to the rejoicing in Cormallen beyond Cair Andros, where your brother awaits you?’

And she said: ‘Do you not know?’

But he answered: ‘Two reasons there may be, but which is true, I do not know.’

And she said: ‘I do not wish to play at riddles. Speak plainer!’

‘Then if you will have it so, lady,’ he said: ‘you do not go, because only your brother called for you, and to look on the Lord Aragorn, Elendil’s heir, in his triumph would now bring you no joy. Or because I do not go, and you desire still to be near me. And maybe for both these reasons, and you yourself cannot choose between them. Éowyn, do you not love me, or will you not?’

‘I wished to be loved by another,’ she answered. ‘But I desire no man’s pity.’

‘That I know,’ he said. ‘You desired to have the love of the Lord Aragorn. Because he was high and puissant, and you wished to have renown and glory and to be lifted far above the mean things that crawl on the earth. And as a great captain may to a young soldier he seemed to you admirable. For so he is, a lord among men, the greatest that now is. But when he gave you only understanding and pity, then you desired to have nothing, unless a brave death in battle. Look at me, Éowyn!’

And Éowyn looked at Faramir long and steadily; and Faramir said: ‘Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart, Éowyn! But I do not offer you my pity. For you are a lady high and valiant and have yourself won renown that shall not be forgotten; and you are a lady beautiful, I deem, beyond even the words of the elven-tongue to tell. And I love you. Once I pitied your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fear or any lack, were you the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you. Éowyn, do you not love me?’

Then the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it. And suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone on her.

‘I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun,’ she said; ‘and behold! the Shadow has departed! I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.’ And again she looked at Faramir. ‘No longer do I desire to be a queen,’ she said.

Then Faramir laughed merrily. ‘That is well,’ he said; ‘for I am not a king. Yet I will wed with the White Lady of Rohan, if it be her will. And if she will, then let us cross the River and in happier days let us dwell in fair Ithilien and there make a garden. All things will grow with joy there, if the White Lady comes.’

‘Then must I leave my own people, man of Gondor?’ she said. ‘And would you have your proud folk say of you: “There goes a lord who tamed a wild shieldmaiden of the North! Was there no woman of the race of Númenor to choose?”

‘I would,’ said Faramir. And he took her in his arms and kissed her under the sunlit sky, and he cared not that they stood high upon the walls in the sight of many. And many indeed saw them and the light that shone about them as they came down from the walls and went hand in hand to the Houses of Healing. And to the Warden of the Houses Faramir said: ‘Here is the Lady Éowyn of Rohan, and now she is healed.‘

JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

You Never Attempted Obedience

by WFTD, posted in faith, Literature, Men and Women
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“Child,” said the Director, “it is not a question of how you or I look on marriage but how my Masters look on it.”
“Someone said they were very old fashioned. But—”
“That was a joke. They are not old fashioned; but they are very, very old.”
“They would never think of finding out first whether Mark and I believed in their ideas of marriage?”
“Well — no,” said the Director with a curious smile. “No. Quite definitely they wouldn’t think of doing that.”
“And would it make no difference to them what a marriage was actually like—whether it was a success? Whether the woman loved her husband?”
Jane had not exactly intended to say this: much less to say it in the cheaply pathetic tone which, it now seemed to her, she had used. Hating herself, and fearing the Director’s silence, she added, “But I suppose you will say I oughtn’t to have told you that.”
“My dear child,” said the Director, “you have been telling me that ever since your husband was mentioned.”
“Does it make no difference?”
“I suppose,” said the Director, “it would depend on how he lost your love.”
Jane was silent. Though she could not tell the Director the truth, and indeed did not know it herself, yet when she tried to explore her inarticulate grievance against Mark, a novel sense of her own injustice and even of pity for her husband, arose in her mind. And her heart sank, for now it seemed to her that this conversation, to which she had vaguely looked for some sort of deliverance from all problems was in fact involving her in new ones.
“It was not his fault,” she said at last. “I suppose our marriage was just a mistake.”
The Director said nothing.
“What would you—what would the people you are talking of—say about a case like that?”
“I will tell you if you really want to know,” said the Director.
“Please,” said Jane reluctantly.
“They would say,” he answered, “that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience.”

CS Lewis, That Hideous Strength

There Is No Paradox

by WFTD, posted in Men and Women, politics, worldview
Nasty Women' Exhibits Raise $50,000 for Planned Parenthood | Fortune

By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well‐being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women’s declining relative well‐being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well‐being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries.

Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness”

But of course there is no paradox. Women (like men) are much happier married, and yet marriage rates are at their lowest in over a century. Women with 2-4 children (unlike childless woman) grow happier over time, and yet women are having fewer and fewer children.

(And the decline in women’s happiness is even worse than Stevenson and Wolfers realize. “23% of women in their 40s and 50s take antidepressants.” Modern women are unhappier even though their happiness is artificially propped up with drugs. Presumably, they would be even more unhappy otherwise.)

Careers and hookups don’t make most women happy—families do. Until a few decades ago, almost all women understood this. But then second-wave feminism was foisted upon us by the Blue Establishment (did you know Gloria Steinem was bankrolled by the CIA?), and now—”paradoxically”—women are unhappier.

The future is nasty indeed.