In the early 90s, I was working for the NYC Department of Probation. One probation officer had a cartoon on her door that I found very amusing. It pictured stacks of library books assorted by subject. The largest stack was labeled, “Why men are idiots.” At the time, I wasn’t offended by the fact that there wasn’t a corresponding section roasting women. Nor had I suspected that this sentiment represented a full scale attack on the traditional role of men, if not also men in general.
However, even women are now sounding the alarm that maleness is under attack. Ethics scholar Christina Hoff Sommers has warned:
·
“Moms and dads, be afraid for your sons. There’s
a ‘war on men’ that started a long time ago in gender studies classes and in
women’s advocacy groups eager to believe that men are toxic… Many ‘educated
women’ in the U.S. have drunk from the gender feminist Kool Aid. Girls at Yale, Haverford and Swarthmore see
themselves as oppressed. This is madness.”
How did this “war on men” arise? Mallory Millet, the sister
of Kate Millet one of the key founders of the National Organization of Women (NOW), became a communist atheist
and joined her sister. She describes one of their first very revealing meetings.
The chairperson had them recite this liturgy, their statement of purpose:
“Why are we here today?” she asked.
“To make revolution,” they
answered.
“What kind of revolution?” she
replied.
“The Cultural Revolution,” they
chanted.
“And how do we make Cultural
Revolution?” she demanded.
“By destroying the American
family!” they answered.
“How do we destroy the family?” she
came back.
“By destroying the American
Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly.
“And how do we destroy the American
Patriarch?” she replied.
“By taking away his power!”
“How do we do that?”
“By destroying monogamy!” they
shouted.
“How can we destroy monogamy?”
To a large extent they succeeded in destroying monogamy and
casting the man as the evil the oppressor. Mallory describes how it works:
·
By the time Women’s Studies professors finish
with your daughter, she will be a shell of the innocent girl you knew, who’s
soon convinced that although she should be flopping down with every boy she
fancies, she should not, by any means, get pregnant. And so, as a practitioner of promiscuity, she
becomes a wizard of prevention techniques, especially abortion. The goal of
Women’s Liberation is to wear each female down to losing all empathy for boys,
men or babies. The tenderest aspects of her soul are roughened into a rock pile
of cynicism, where she will think nothing of murdering her baby in the warm
protective nest of her little-girl womb.
She will be taught that she, in order to free herself, must become an
outlaw. This is only reasonable because all Western law, since Magna Carta and
even before, is a concoction of the evil white man whose true purpose is to
press her into slavery.
Feminist anger had blinded them to the welfare of those they
pledged to help. Consequently, the women have paid the greatest price for their
radical indoctrination. Mallory claims that she has heard many stories
detailing these prices:
·
“Your sister’s books destroyed my sister’s
life!” I’ve heard numerous times. “She
was happily married with four kids and after she read those books, walked out
on a bewildered man and didn’t look back.”
The man fell into despairing rack and ruin. The children were stunted,
set off their tracks, deeply harmed; the family profoundly dislocated and there
was “no putting Humpty-Dumpty together again.”
This indoctrination is a tornado
that has harmed all in its path. Mallory Millet summarized her observations:
·
I’ve known women who fell for this creed in
their youth who now, in their fifties and sixties, cry themselves to sleep
decades of countless nights grieving for the children they’ll never have and
the ones they coldly murdered because they were protecting the empty loveless
futures they now live with no way of going back. “Where are my children? Where are my grandchildren?” they cry to me.
This indoctrination has devalued the woman and what she has
always done best. It has robbed her of her beauty by insisting that her value
resided in being like a man, a role she was never designed to play.
This is not to say that men
haven’t abused their power. They certainly have, but all shouldn’t be
castigated for the few! Patriarchy is not the problem but the abuse of it. It
has been the protective patriarchal instinct that has led men to sacrifice
themselves for the sake of their families. In “Patriarchy Recalled,” Terrell
Clemmons has written:
·
Many a fierce woman has put on a warrior front
because she’s been mistreated by a man—or has been convinced that without it,
she will be. But this is not the problem of patriarchy. This is what happens
when men fail to live out the masculine commission of the Prime Patriarch.
Rightly understood, patriarchy involves selfless leadership under the
fatherhood of God. (Salvo, Summer
2018, #45, 21)
The radical feminists have alienated both man and woman from
themselves, condemning them to blindly roam a bleak terrain of sameness seeking
the self that they had rejected. They have stripped man and woman of the roles
that they had been designed to fulfill, leaving them to act out parts contrary
to themselves. Instead of complimenting their partner, they are advised to
compete against them.
In contrast, Clemmons argues for self-acceptance:
·
Women crave love and safety under the protection
of a strong and trustworthy leader, someone with a heart of flesh and a spine
of steel who will position himself between the perils of the world and the
people he loves. And mothers and children thrive best within the shelter of a
father who would sooner die than violate the sacred trust of being their
provider and protector. This is not rocket science. Sensible people intuitively
know these things. (21-22)
The stats also affirm these things.
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