#BringBackOurMen
Turn Right At Lost was published in 2015
We have a Men Problem!
Though our planet is full of males, there is a growing shortage of Men.
I criticized Michelle Obama for tweeting #BringBackOurGirls when the Radical Islamic Terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped 143 African schoolgirls, because I thought using Twitter to ask for help in such a desperate wartime crime was hopelessly naive.
But I feel just the opposite about the subject of how our culture has hijacked the role men play in society. The traditional role that men have played in society has atrophied. And I believe it is the result of a series of cultural trends that have formed a perfect storm, a torrential rain of cultural decisions denying men their historically respected role as leader of the 'family.'
And maybe Twitter is as good as any medium to get the message out, to motivate users to at least think about such an important cultural dilemma. I don't really think so, and it strikes me as silly that the Nation's First Lady is serious about using Twitter to address a serious issue.
The World is experiencing a profound realignment of the traditional role of the sexes.
Lead by the American women's liberation movement, and fueled by the extreme overreaction to the idea of helping women make up for generations of women riding in the backseat of world culture, men increasingly find themselves in a gray area of irrelevance.
This is not to say that we should, or could, ever go back to the place in history where men truly walked all over women. It is just an attempt to put into perspective some of the astonishing events that are occurring at an increasingly alarming rate: I am speaking about two sides of the same coin.
Why are we seeing so many seemingly unexplainable mass murders involving young men slaughtering innocent people, mostly other young people or school children?
Why is there a growing movement of young Muslim men anxiously volunteering to blow themselves up while simultaneously slaughtering other innocent Muslims (and Christians and Jews) while screaming 'God is Great!"?
The common denominator?
Young Islamic extremist terrorists committing murder-suicide of innocent people and young middle class privileged American males using high powered military style weapons to commit murder-suicide of other young people... the disease has near identical symptoms because the underlying chemistry in the cultural petri dish is the same.
Why is this pandemic cultural disease only affecting men? Let's look at the state of men in our World....where to start?
Disproportionately high unemployment?
Family dysfunction?
Divorce? Depression?
Gender confusion?
Hostility towards women?
Decreasing graduation rates?
Inability to form long term relationships?
Loss of trust?
Lack of anger control?
Sexual deviancy and high incarceration rates?
Increasing gang influence?
Self destructive behaviour and lack of remorse?
Mass murder of children and students?
This is a huge problem. The statistics are overwhelming, that men and boys are suffering from all of these maladies at astonishingly high rates, but the volume and severity of them metastasized right about the time the women's rights movement began in the early '60's. The numbers have grown exponentially since, both in Western and Islamic culture.
And another strong association: The influence of television, also coming of age at about the same time.
Yes, I believe the modern day Middle Eastern terrorist is in an indirect way, a product of many of the same forces that are influencing young males in the West. In fact, the FBI has said, more and more young American men are attracted to and actively joining Jihad.
In a lab, they would call that 'cross-contamination.'
Internationally, Islamic fundamentalist extremists display nearly identical profiles of American mass murderers. Have you ever noticed how young Islamic males are abandoned to their mothers by the Islamic code that ascribes all childbearing and raising duties to the enslaved women so the men can attend religious functions, tribal assemblies and to focus solely on themselves? Islamic fundamentalist men use their religion as an excuse, but the results are very much the same. Fundamentalist Muslim fathers take no responsibility for their children. Their women basically raise the children alone and must be the male role model for their sons.
Moderate Fundamentalist Muslims rationalize extremist violence by blaming extreme poverty, disrespect for Westernized Muslim values, anger at Western displays of pornography, extreme wealth, abuse of alcohol, drugs and blasphemy of Allah.
In the Western culture we have over five decades of marginalization of marriage and the family unit, organized religion, and the rejection of authority. Everything has been focused on the preservation of youth, and the abandonment of any form of self denial.
Inner city dynamics mirror middle east dysfunctions: welfare programs encourage men to abandon their families as single mothers receive government assistance. Making babies is a source of monthly income, food stamps, and other subsidies, so the humanity of procreation has been marginalized. Most inner city families are fatherless. The causes are different, but the results are similar to Middle Eastern Islamic family dysfunctions.
The explosion of mass murders has been perpetrated by angry males, who are typically disenfranchised, emotionally disfigured and abandoned, convinced that the whole world is against them, confused by the denial of traditional male entitlement, and driven by extreme narcissism.
They act out by taking on the role of a malevolent God, and viciously terminating the lives of the children of the women who have stolen their manhood.
They manufacture all kinds of rationals, but to these sick people, it is sweet revenge and empowerment!
These violent humans are the extreme, obviously. But they are the proverbial canary in the coal mine of civilization. And they are not 'men' by any definition. They are acting more like abused animals.
If you separate a puppy from it's mother at a young age, use force to discipline it, keep it locked up as it grows rapidly, don't allow it to socialize, give it no love and attention, keep it in a constant state of insecurity, and reward it for aggressive behavior, you get a dangerous wild animal that will explode in violence at the slightest threat.
Sound familiar?
Men are a lot like dogs: they tend to be task oriented, respond well to affection and affirmation. Men understand and thrive in hierarchies, they feel most comfortable when they know their role and can respond to expectations. Men are problem solvers by nature and will become frustrated when they are stymied by cultural counter forces. When a dog is given attention, understandable, compassionate and deliberate discipline, they respond with unconditional love to their Masters.
Likewise, men who assume the lead of the family, who accept the implied responsibility of providing sustenance and security to their family, typically thrive.
The opposite of that is the phenomenon of social aggression, whether in the form of gangs, criminal organizations or even military forces. Men naturally form hierarchies and alliances to maintain an element of control. The growth of the gang culture is demonstratively a result of the lack of father figures, especially in the inner city culture. Ask any gangster what the appeal is, and he will inevitably say, "my homies are like family to me."
Here are some of the things young men are confronted with in modern culture:
Institutionalized disrespect of male leadership...when will the first woman become President (obviously men suck at it? Men are responsible for the millions of deaths suffered in all of the World's wars...for thousands of years, men have subjugated women...women are not allowed to become clergy in organized religion...
The male as father is discriminatory...it assumes women are less capable of running a family...men as head of the family subjugates and denies woman's need to develop self esteem and achieve equality...men are depicted as clowns and dummies, if not outright sexists and racists, on television programs...men are stereotypically characterized as unable to remain monogamous and are born philanderers...men receive all kinds of favorable treatment all through life and many would not be where they are today if they had not been given preferential treatment...
Starting with the Sexual Revolution of the 1960's, virtually all institutions of learning have taught a doctrine of female-centric, male bashing curriculum reflecting the belief that men have caused most of the world's problems and it will be women who will eventually deliver us from self destruction.
Fifty years later, men are disproportionately underemployed. They are entering and graduating from college at dramatically lower rates than women. The marriage rate is way down, as is the birth rate. Young men are living with their parents to an average age of 27! Boys are far more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system and men in prison than are women.
In every category of causes of premature death, men and boys suffer much higher rates than women and girls. Men are having serious problems emotionally and especially romantically. In fact, it is hard to find men who truly understand intimacy anymore!
We can argue about the divorce rate, but the truth is, the person who suffers the most from divorce is the son(s). They are often subjected to harsh trials where the father is characterized as the demon, because obviously a lot of money is at stake and the women must do that to protect her financial status. Custody and visitation is typically skewed toward the mother, so a boy-of-divorce sees much less of his dad, and the influence he would have to be a role model is greatly reduced. The son often blames himself and then develops feelings of abandonment and extreme resentment, even hatred of his mom, while secretly looking for ways to validate his manhood, to prove to his unengaged father that he has value and can act independently, especially to an extreme degree.
The resulting conflict, the confusion about the alienation of everyone he loves, the pressure to not be the chauvinistic male his hormones are telling him to be, engenders itself in thoughts of suicide, revenge and self hatred.
Do the math; if over 50% of marriages end in divorce in America, as some analysis would indicate, what does that do to our ability as a society to raise boys who can then become good fathers. The argument that marriage is a failed institution is a slippery slope and rapidly becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. But is the high rate of divorce necessarily a result of the nature of the institution, or has it been seriously damaged by the explosion of the egocentrism the past half century?
Men and especially boys have become so increasingly irrelevant and their existence marginalized, that many have adopted a more feminized profile, wearing gender neutral clothes, hairstyles and jewelry. Shaving facial and body hair, and even speaking in feminine narratives. For many men, hooking up with another male is not purely a sexual predilection, it is just easier.
Now, as for the influence of TV...it is easy to see why Islamic Fundamentalism is on the warpath. Everything that is abhorrent to their belief system is precisely what drives TV, TV ratings, audience share and advertising money. A Muslim person watching TV is, by nature, offensive to Allah, thereby creating a deep divide within the Islamic world. And for western males, it feeds their fantasy, eats away at their self esteem, provides virtual intimacy, and dulls their minds. Video games promote escapist, violence oriented solutions to conflicts in culture, gender relations, workplace, and family.
TV, computers, video games, and even celebrity, drive men into caves of virtual reality, a place where women are submissive and less dismissive.
All of this is to say that the proverbial writing is on the wall; we just need to recognize it and also accept that we are the reason this wave of male dysfunction is cresting. Baby Boomers have selfishly focused too much on their own lives, refused to grow up and to accept adult responsibility, and the need for self sacrifice required to properly nurture, teach and demonstrate what a parent, not just a friend, should be. We need to understand and accept the natural role of the male species in the physical, physiological and emotional lifespan of the human being.
We have forgotten to take care of our boys, and now we have a generation of males that don't know how to be men.