Toxic Feminism
We've all heard about toxic masculinity, about how "boys being boys" is somehow 'bad' or oppressive, violent, regressive, or otherwise harmful to society. The implication is that everything about girls is good, right, and beneficial to society. Anyone that grew up in a family environment with boys and girls know that girls are (generally) far more manipulative and twice as savage as boys when it comes to confrontation and conflict resolution. Boys may be quicker to shove or throw a punch, but generally after quick scraps that most often get broken up by adults or older siblings/peers the conflict is resolved. This behavior in boys helps build conflict resolution skills and learn to better associate with other boys (and not be so quick to act out in violence as it has a cost). I'm not talking about the bullying that happens in schools, which is by no means exclusive to boys, or even dominated by boys... again, girls, savage.
Despite these and other factors regular masculine behavior is being lumped in with actual toxic masculine behavior and anything 'masculine' is actively being discouraged in our children's schools. Whether spoken explicitly or not, the message received by boys is that masculinity is undesirable.
Likewise there is something occurring in our culture (and schools) with girls as well. Our girls are being told that their primary value is in the workforce, and to choose to be a stay-at-home mom is a betrayal the their feminist foremothers. Mothers of my generation are shamed by 'professional' women if they make such choices for themselves, the tragedy with this is a similar message as the one with boys; that motherhood as a priority is undesirable. As a result many women that have very successful careers also lack fulfillment in those careers. The implication here is that part of what naturally fulfills them is the role of stay-at-home mom.
We are animals, just like every other animal on this little planet, we have our natural tendencies and orientations that clinical psychologists have re-affirmed time and time again. Generally speaking, women gravitate in interest towards interpersonal connectedness, such as relationships, and men tend to gravitate in interest towards objects, things like tools and shelter. Men, generally speaking make poor care-takers, at least compared to women, fulfillment for a man typically comes through accomplishment in vocation that in turn provides for family, many will claim that this is merely a social construct, but most of the data disagrees. While the male-female dynamics in other animals vary greatly there is almost always a male-female dynamic. I think we could probably dive into this much deeper but the key point I want to make here is that we are destroying some of the roles built into our species, calling them social constructs, and replacing them with actual social constructs, and it is literally killing us.
In the West, birthrates among native western people is dropping to such an extent that there is a need for the mass immigration from non-western countries that have not adopted the evisceration of traditional male-female roles, and thus reproduce and a higher rate (which has a cost to western culture as a practice - not going into that in this post). Not only this, but most critically our 'Western' society has attenuated the involvement of mothers in the raising of their children, particularly the boys, by not only convincing them to work but also by exhausting them with that work to the point where they often lack the energy to properly parent difficult scenarios properly. Same goes for dads, since everyone is working everyone has to share the domestic workload (cooking, cleaning etc.). This leaves parenting to teachers, which is not their job. After speaking with a couple of retired high school teachers they noted that the behavior of all students has degraded (boys and girls) from the 1990's to the 2010's. This is harming our boys and girls. But it isn't girls that are committing mass-shootings, it's the young men.
I listened to a psychologist speak on the radio about the recent mass shootings where the suspects in all three were men in their early twenties, and with few exceptions most over the last 20 years have been young men of high school to college age whom most often feel entitled (lack of parenting) and have a superiority complex (a reaction to being told masculine is bad), but have diverse backgrounds (criminal records, economic situation, etc.).
That's when it all occurred to me. While "progressive" politicians and the media want to go after the firearm, no one wants to look at the impetus for the violence. Only the tools involved, without recognizing the obvious pressure-cooker they are helping to create. All we hear out of a majority of the current Democratic candidates is how bad the racism is, how toxic a lot (most?) men are, when both of these "crisis" phenomenon are rare and isolated. They need to convince us that there is something wrong that only they can fix and that the current POTUS is the cause of all. It's a lie, but in their desperation to acquire the oval office, or a seat in congress, they are inadvertently radicalizing our young men. Sure, these particular monsters probably had some other deeper issues, but young people always have, and we have had the guns for well over a century now. So what has changed? I believe it is two things, how we raise our boys (both the parenting aspect and the 'toxic' masculinity aspect), and how we immortalize these mass shooters after the fact.
One more important factor that needs mentioning. Screens. Social interaction among kids has been reduced by devices, screens. Social media and online games have replaced much (perhaps all in some cases) of a young person's social interactions. I can't help but feel this has also had a negative impact on empathy, but that is just my feeling. The busy parents use devices to entertain and pacify their kids when they lack the energy to 'deal' with them. My observation is that this is more prevalent in older parents, those that waiting until their 30's or 40's to have kids. These devices are designed to be behaviorally addictive. I myself have observed that when our kids had a few friends over they would all sit in a room and look at their devices, no interaction! So we mad a rule, devices go in a basket and everyone is forced to interact. Believe it or not, our house was a favorite, and we are not wealthy, not even median income for a household in our area.
What I think is needed is a social correction to address the problem. Banning guns will not stop the attacks, the tools will merely change, so instead of confronting the tools let us confront the problem. Our boys (and girls) need moms and dads that are more involved than merely shuttling them to and from soccer practice. Parents need to be there at the end of the child's day and still possess the energy to engage them in their daily trials, trials which might seem trivial to an adult but are the world to a youth or child. We also need to stop trying to 'correct' the generally inherent behaviors and tendencies of boys and girls and recognize the different strengths each has and put some energy into nurturing those strengths instead of shaming them. We need to remember that moms and dads each provide unique parenting roles for both boys and girls. I'm not trying to take a swipe at same-sex partners but I have observed first hand that boys raised by two dads and no moms lack certain social skills, particularly when it comes to dealing with girls. Mom matters. Dad matters. Sometimes it makes more sense for mom to work and dad to tend to the home, these are exceptions and they work just as well for the most part. I know this is a tall order, especially since divorce rates exceed 50%, a topic for a post of its own, but we need to recognize this toxic feminism that has driven moms into unsatisfying careers and boys into feeling shameful for who they are, if anything you would have thought the LGBTQ community would recognize the harm of that... shaming who someone is.
Despite these and other factors regular masculine behavior is being lumped in with actual toxic masculine behavior and anything 'masculine' is actively being discouraged in our children's schools. Whether spoken explicitly or not, the message received by boys is that masculinity is undesirable.
Likewise there is something occurring in our culture (and schools) with girls as well. Our girls are being told that their primary value is in the workforce, and to choose to be a stay-at-home mom is a betrayal the their feminist foremothers. Mothers of my generation are shamed by 'professional' women if they make such choices for themselves, the tragedy with this is a similar message as the one with boys; that motherhood as a priority is undesirable. As a result many women that have very successful careers also lack fulfillment in those careers. The implication here is that part of what naturally fulfills them is the role of stay-at-home mom.
We are animals, just like every other animal on this little planet, we have our natural tendencies and orientations that clinical psychologists have re-affirmed time and time again. Generally speaking, women gravitate in interest towards interpersonal connectedness, such as relationships, and men tend to gravitate in interest towards objects, things like tools and shelter. Men, generally speaking make poor care-takers, at least compared to women, fulfillment for a man typically comes through accomplishment in vocation that in turn provides for family, many will claim that this is merely a social construct, but most of the data disagrees. While the male-female dynamics in other animals vary greatly there is almost always a male-female dynamic. I think we could probably dive into this much deeper but the key point I want to make here is that we are destroying some of the roles built into our species, calling them social constructs, and replacing them with actual social constructs, and it is literally killing us.
In the West, birthrates among native western people is dropping to such an extent that there is a need for the mass immigration from non-western countries that have not adopted the evisceration of traditional male-female roles, and thus reproduce and a higher rate (which has a cost to western culture as a practice - not going into that in this post). Not only this, but most critically our 'Western' society has attenuated the involvement of mothers in the raising of their children, particularly the boys, by not only convincing them to work but also by exhausting them with that work to the point where they often lack the energy to properly parent difficult scenarios properly. Same goes for dads, since everyone is working everyone has to share the domestic workload (cooking, cleaning etc.). This leaves parenting to teachers, which is not their job. After speaking with a couple of retired high school teachers they noted that the behavior of all students has degraded (boys and girls) from the 1990's to the 2010's. This is harming our boys and girls. But it isn't girls that are committing mass-shootings, it's the young men.
I listened to a psychologist speak on the radio about the recent mass shootings where the suspects in all three were men in their early twenties, and with few exceptions most over the last 20 years have been young men of high school to college age whom most often feel entitled (lack of parenting) and have a superiority complex (a reaction to being told masculine is bad), but have diverse backgrounds (criminal records, economic situation, etc.).
That's when it all occurred to me. While "progressive" politicians and the media want to go after the firearm, no one wants to look at the impetus for the violence. Only the tools involved, without recognizing the obvious pressure-cooker they are helping to create. All we hear out of a majority of the current Democratic candidates is how bad the racism is, how toxic a lot (most?) men are, when both of these "crisis" phenomenon are rare and isolated. They need to convince us that there is something wrong that only they can fix and that the current POTUS is the cause of all. It's a lie, but in their desperation to acquire the oval office, or a seat in congress, they are inadvertently radicalizing our young men. Sure, these particular monsters probably had some other deeper issues, but young people always have, and we have had the guns for well over a century now. So what has changed? I believe it is two things, how we raise our boys (both the parenting aspect and the 'toxic' masculinity aspect), and how we immortalize these mass shooters after the fact.
One more important factor that needs mentioning. Screens. Social interaction among kids has been reduced by devices, screens. Social media and online games have replaced much (perhaps all in some cases) of a young person's social interactions. I can't help but feel this has also had a negative impact on empathy, but that is just my feeling. The busy parents use devices to entertain and pacify their kids when they lack the energy to 'deal' with them. My observation is that this is more prevalent in older parents, those that waiting until their 30's or 40's to have kids. These devices are designed to be behaviorally addictive. I myself have observed that when our kids had a few friends over they would all sit in a room and look at their devices, no interaction! So we mad a rule, devices go in a basket and everyone is forced to interact. Believe it or not, our house was a favorite, and we are not wealthy, not even median income for a household in our area.
What I think is needed is a social correction to address the problem. Banning guns will not stop the attacks, the tools will merely change, so instead of confronting the tools let us confront the problem. Our boys (and girls) need moms and dads that are more involved than merely shuttling them to and from soccer practice. Parents need to be there at the end of the child's day and still possess the energy to engage them in their daily trials, trials which might seem trivial to an adult but are the world to a youth or child. We also need to stop trying to 'correct' the generally inherent behaviors and tendencies of boys and girls and recognize the different strengths each has and put some energy into nurturing those strengths instead of shaming them. We need to remember that moms and dads each provide unique parenting roles for both boys and girls. I'm not trying to take a swipe at same-sex partners but I have observed first hand that boys raised by two dads and no moms lack certain social skills, particularly when it comes to dealing with girls. Mom matters. Dad matters. Sometimes it makes more sense for mom to work and dad to tend to the home, these are exceptions and they work just as well for the most part. I know this is a tall order, especially since divorce rates exceed 50%, a topic for a post of its own, but we need to recognize this toxic feminism that has driven moms into unsatisfying careers and boys into feeling shameful for who they are, if anything you would have thought the LGBTQ community would recognize the harm of that... shaming who someone is.
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-J