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| All of these are the virtues of being a good man. How many do you follow? |
If you ever had a desire to start a wild brawl of ideas on the internet, there could be few better places to start than to question the accepted orthodoxy of toxic masculinity. But while some might shy away from a deep questioning of it, for fear of ending up in that brawl of ideas I mentioned earlier, I am nothing if not the sort who doesn’t give a god damn about offending people. I don’t fetishize the idea of safe spaces, or not saying something because someone may take offense to it. Obviously, I try very hard to not be a dick. But I do so based on a set of standards I’ve set for myself.
My standards: You say something, you should be able to back it up with facts and research. No one who makes a statement and then tells me to do the work of checking their hypothesis will ever be taken seriously.
Do not use absolutes. Never, for any reason, imply that an entire class of people possess one similar personality, or psychological, trait just because it makes your argument easier to make. It’s childish.
There, that’s the whole list.
Back to our story. Toxic masculinity is defined as the mores that make up the bad, and worst, parts of socialized masculinity.
Things like an excessively high lack of emotional expression, a defaulting towards violence as a need to solve problems, and sexual dominance are all things that have, at various times, been explained to be examples of toxic masculinity.
But, and this is a fear I find increasingly founded, what is a better way? Can there be one out there?
In this edition of the Rationalist, I move to answer that question, and explain how an archetype of cool from the era of World War II can give us all the answers we need.
To understand the ideal of manhood I want to have some small role in bringing back to the American culture, we firstly need a more nuanced understanding of what we want our boys and men to be.
No one, at least no one sensible, is arguing for the above-mentioned toxic masculinity to be a tentpole of how we raise our sons. but I think where the trouble arises is in the idea that raising our sons and daughters can be different exercises.
And it is. It undoubtedly is.
At the most basic level, we expect our sons to grow into men who can be useful in the service of things that matter. And as young boys, they aspire to this goal as well. Think, reader, of the heroes you had as a small child. What were they? Who were they? For me, they were Superman, and Captain America. Men who did the right thing, who fought on behalf of what everyone knew to be good reasons. These were not men who represented anything but the best masculinity could ever hope to offer, to stand for.
They were never weak, or cowardly. Masculinity, and manhood, cannot prize a man who routinely refuses to stand up for what he believes in, but expects others to do that work for him. If you are in a dangerous situation, the man who refuses to do his part is the last man you want to be beside. That man will sell you out. He might not mean to, or even want to, but your focus on doing his job as well as your own will catch up to you.
This does not mean they were emotionless automatons. Far from it. Rather, for a man of the sort I am speaking, emotion is a good thing. But they sought to harness the power of those emotions, and use them in the service of an objective.
They were men of mastery. Captain America was skilled in many things besides fighting. He was an expert leader, a military strategist of the 1st order, and a skilled artist. Superman is, well, almost completely perfect. No one is saying, and no one is expecting, perfection should be your goal. But some skills in the world are required. Be educated, be well-read and well-spoken. Be capable of other things in addition to displays of raw strength and power.
And finally, honor. These are men who kept to a moral code, and kept to it when breaking it would have been easy. This, right here, is the one all men can aspire to follow. You may not be able to master skills, but you can be a virtuous man of high moral character.
But over time, especially in America, what happens? All of that is bred out of our boys.
Right now, in America and the west in general, boys are struggling. They are less educated, and make less money, than girls do. They commit suicide at a higher rate, and are jailed more often and longer.
On every level, it is harder to be a boy now than ever before.
How do we remedy this? How do we save our sons? Easy.
We remind them of the gentlemen, the rugged gentlemen, we once taught them how to be.
If you provide a boy with no positive role models, no idea of the sort of man you want him to be, is it any great wonder he will seek out role models wherever he can find them? And there are men out there who will give them bad advice if you won’t step up to the mark.
Men like RooshV, and the rest of the execrable pick-up and seduction community, are there waiting to tell a confused teenager unsure of how to be a man that the best way to do so is by sleeping with as many random women as possible.
Don’t let them. Teach them the power of waiting, of being a gentleman who treats every possible relationship not as a thing to be conquered, but as a prize you must earn the right to attempt to win. Teach your young sons to aspire, to believe in their best selves.
Men on the left, male feminists like Matt McGorry and others, will tell them that strength is less necessary than emotional openness. They will tell a boy who wants to believe in the esprit de corps of their sports team that it is their job, at all times and in all things, to check their privilege and remain incessantly on guard against toxic masculinity.
Don’t let this happen either. Encourage your sons to believe themselves to be kings and princes, and aspire to have the strength of the best kings. Tell them to be kings like Saladin, Suleiman, and Augustus Caesar.
We can raise a generation of rugged gentleman, men in the tradition of our great thinkers and warriors. Or we can continue to raise soft man-children who do nothing, stand for nothing, and are nothing.
What do you choose?
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