feminine-genius

Toxic masculinity

My last column was on this topic, in which I ask the question: is there a feminine counterpart?

If, though, we agree to the term “toxic” for some male actions, then we must turn the spotlight around to women and ask how they are prone to corrupting their femininity. Women on a wide scale are rejecting chastity, marriage, motherhood, and creative collaboration with men. Having pointed to men’s corruption, we must admit that many women abuse their own creative powers, by replacing love with manipulation, and cooperation with contempt for authentic masculinity. Thus, too many men and women have issued a non servium, and while masculinity is targeted as the root evil of today, the suggestion that we must “feminise” men is to ask them to act in ways that women themselves have abandoned.

Did a little poking around on the net, and found that some claim that there a toxic femininity, but of course it's as I feared: huswivery, birthin' babies, traditional marriage, and the like. I'm braving the waters to discuss it tomorrow [very early] on Relevant Radio, with John Harper (7am East Coast time). Overall, if we have no divine mission ("Go forth, multiply") and no deference to the instruction manual (complementarity between men and women to build a civilisation of love) then all our energies -- sexual, creative, intellectual, and physical -- will be spent on a bonfire of vanities and trivialities. If every man/woman is for himself, his pleasure, his power, and his social construct, then what would have been devoted to personal holiness, the well-being of the family, and the good of the community will well-nigh be wasted at the gym, on the screens, and roving about, hoping to scratch the incessant itch. We are knocking about in a self-made cave, refusing to come into the sunlight. Fie on us, and our benighted progeny. Jesus, mercy.

Talking about men!

For twenty years, I've stuck to the topic of authentic femininity, but I've branched out a little. This fine group asked for an interview, and the old girl had a few thoughts about men. Find Chatty Cathy here!

Utterly inspiring!

If the world has you down, take a few minutes at least to watch the first of these Humanum videos:

 

There are six in all (found here) -- beautifully written, compellingly filmed, and grounded in eternal truths. If we simply live this reality, all will be well.

"Accessory to sexism"

A clear clash between feminism and multiculturalism has arisen at York University in Toronto, Canada:

After refusing to honour a male student’s request to be separated from his female classmates for religious reasons, a York University professor has found himself at odds with administrators who assert he broke their “obligation to accommodate.”

It's amusing actually, and the school is proving more obtuse than the student. When the professor refused his request, the student backed down "cheerfully" and joined the class. When the women in the school were told of the request, they were insulted. When the school found out what had transpired, their firm stance was to accomodate the [evidently ambivalent] young man and throw the insulted women overboard.

Very, very odd, and yet only a hint of what's to come with the competing claims inherent to our increasingly fragmented society. 

A mother evolves

This mother of twins (one boy, one girl) has changed her thinking on "gender stereotypes" by actually watching her children, and has some cute observations. 

Boy/ girl differences aren't colour-coded but the distinctions are deep rooted and genetically programmed. From day one Agatha has been emotionally cute, screaming blue murder to be held and from her new, lofty position she would smile smugly at her grounded brother. Charm personified in front of visitors, dough-eyed and cooing, and always preferring to sit on a male knee. In short, she has learned how to adapt her performance in front of different audiences.

Multitasking comes naturally as she clings on to both walkers simultaneously, flitting from one toy to another in rapid succession, looking to us for entertainment. You might say, like most women, she's an attention seeker – it takes one to know one. Turning on the waterworks, being deliberately obtuse, or embracing strangers are all classic tactics that I've employed over the years. I can see her little mind whirring – how can I maximise the attention potential of this situation? That's ma girl.

Emotionally more straightforward, Benjamin spent the first three months eating and sleeping. He hit the protein shakes hard and got massive, at which point he started to compete and to make himself heard. Something that resonates for men throughout their life time – the association between physical prowess and confidence.

He can focus on one activity, albeit looking at his boardbooks (with which he's obsessed), watching a cartoon or happily playing by himself in the playpen.

That said, as a mother of more than one boy and more than one girl, I can attest to the fact that there is a tremendous range with both. I think stereotypes can be deadly (either clinging to them or obstinately rejecting them), and yet we can now attest to the fact that there are physiological differences in male and female brains. 

What is marvelous, though, is that this mother has changed in her own thinking, taking the cues from her own children and acting on them:

"I don't care if my son grows up to become a cross-dressing star of musical theatre," I declared 18 months ago, determined not to force society's gender expectations upon them. "And if my daughter wants to be a 16st lumberjack, so be it."

But this Christmas I'll be listening to my maternal instinct and giving what I think Benny and Aggy want – a big red bus and a baby doll, respectively.

There's still a long way to go to discover the innate vocation of each--which is not as superficial as choosing toys--but at least she'll stop forcing square pegs into round holes. It's a start. 

The dignity of manhood

Social scientists are beginning to connect the dots on how the disintegration of the family is not only harming individuals, but is also at the heart of the growing wave of violence.

Another shooting, another son of divorce. From Adam Lanza, who killed 26 children and adults a year ago at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn., to Karl Pierson, who shot a teenage girl and killed himself this past Friday at Arapahoe High in Centennial, Colo., one common and largely unremarked thread tying together most of the school shooters that have struck the nation in the last year is that they came from homes marked by divorce or an absent father. From shootings at MIT (i.e., the Tsarnaev brothers) to the University of Central Florida to the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, Ga., nearly every shooting over the last year in Wikipedia’s “list of U.S. school attacks” involved a young man whose parents divorced or never married in the first place.

The social scientific evidence about the connection between violence and broken homes could not be clearer. My own research suggests that boys living in single mother homes are almost twice as likely to end up delinquent compared to boys who enjoy good relationships with their father. Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson has written that “Family structure is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, predictor of variations in urban violence across cities in the United States.” His views are echoed by the eminent criminologists Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi, who have written that “such family measures as the percentage of the population divorced, the percentage of households headed by women, and the percentage of unattached individuals in the community are among the most powerful predictors of crime rates.”

While broken families were rare fifty years ago, that is no longer the case. More children now live without their biological father in the home than with, which is stunning statistic. That means that not only do fatherless children not see their own dads, they don't see many of their friends' dads either. 

So we have many children growing up fatherless. The girls are encouraged to excel in school and a lot of energy is spent on building their self-esteem. They find classrooms geared to their success, a sports culture that is enthusiastic for their participation, and colleges that believe in them.

But what about the boys? If they don't see their own dads, what do they see -- in the classroom, through the music industry, at the movies, on their ubiquitous screens? To put it mildly, the role models are lacking -- and often completely toxic. Where can they turn to understand the dignity of manhood?

And what of contemporary men, those whose turn it is to create and care for the next generation? Who will there be to choose from when these [materially] successful young women wish to create families and build culture? Camille Paglia has some choice words for the current situation:

Is it any wonder that so many high-achieving young women, despite all the happy talk about their academic success, find themselves in the early stages of their careers in chronic uncertainty or anxiety about their prospects for an emotionally fulfilled private life? When an educated culture routinely denigrates masculinity and manhood, then women will be perpetually stuck with boys, who have no incentive to mature or to honor their commitments. And without strong men as models to either embrace or (for dissident lesbians) to resist, women will never attain a centered and profound sense of themselves as women.

It was always the proper mission of feminism to attack and reconstruct the ossified social practices that had led to wide-ranging discrimination against women. But surely it was and is possible for a progressive reform movement to achieve that without stereotyping, belittling or demonizing men. History must be seen clearly and fairly: obstructive traditions arose not from men’s hatred or enslavement of women but from the natural division of labor that had developed over thousands of years during the agrarian period and that once immensely benefited and protected women, permitting them to remain at the hearth to care for helpless infants and children. Over the past century, it was labor-saving appliances, invented by men and spread by capitalism, that liberated women from daily drudgery.

And yet feminism has heaped scorn on masculinity and decried the strengths natural to men. It has feminised the classroom, the workplace, and in many places the church sanctuaries. God the father has been replaced with gender-neutral imagery, and grrl power has been pumped into through the very pipes of most institutions.

So the men check out. They won't commit, they won't protect, and they won't father. Is it any wonder that so many of the boys go wild, sowing mayhem, taking out their aggression on a society who believes that their very masculinity is the problem. Those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind.

Honour men, masculinity, and fatherhood. Collaborate with men for the good of the children. Male and female He made them, and He saw that it was good. Let's do what we can to restore a healthy culture in which all children can thrive.

"Shrews pleading for taming"

While I've been toying with theology a good while, and pondering the vocation of woman, I admit my blind spot is the popular culture which I avoid as much as possible. Thus, I admire this writer who has slogged through a vulgar rant to find some jewels about those who misunderstand femininity. The piece she read was called “The Case Against Female Self Esteem,” and the man who wrote it was fed up with the women he encountered. She summarises his response here:

In a nutshell, the author lists reasons why strong and confident women are repellant and unattractive. Women should be insecure, he argues, because insecurity is integral to femininity. Insecurity leads to vulnerability and vulnerability is paramount within relationships. Tell your feminist ideals to shove off! You ladies know that all this independence and confidence is not for you. He concludes with this quote: “There’s no such thing as a strong, independent woman, only shrews pleading for taming.”

The writer, Sarah Gould, then goes on to dismantle his caricature, highlighting three categories of women: the post-modern feminist (who seems to despise both masculinity and femininity) and the Jersey Shore babe (who only needs men for "sex and admiration"). Is it any wonder, she asks, that faced with these two monstrosities that he opts for the third type, which Ms Gould calls the "needy leech"? 

If you are a woman and you see a little bit of yourself in each one of these stereotypes, don’t be alarmed. I see a bit of myself in each of them too and that, as I came to understand, is precisely my point. All caricatures contain a fragment of reality wrapped within scads of exaggeration. Real femininity, as God meant it to be, is a bit like all of these women. But only a bit. Women are meant to be hard and soft...  I do believe that women are meant to be vulnerable. But vulnerability should never, ever be based in fear, self-doubt, or insecurity. Vulnerability should be anchored firmly in the Lord.

She has excellent insights and illustrations. I love seeing Christians take on their contemporary world to show--even in the unlikeliest of places--the ubiquitous thirst for God and for authentic companionship. 

[Crikey! Looking for a modest picture of the JS ladies wasn't easy...]

Two aging feminists

They may have burned their bras, but that didn't mean that they really wanted to go natural. Natural fibers, yes; natural aging, no. Organic food, yes; organic fertility, no. Shunning the conventions of the traditional family and a God-centered society certainly didn't mean shunning their own conventions once they were established -- and their own included as much sterile sex as possible with whomever they chose. The sexual revolution has hinged on the belief that intimacy need not lead to babies, nor should it be reserved for life-long marriage. Unfortunately, that premise has utterly changed the landscape in our world -- and not for the better.

Gloria Steinem has few regrets:

[She] wishes she’d “fought harder” for things she believed in. One of the choices she doesn’t regret, however, is not having had children.

“I was in Mumbai at a women’s center a few years ago, and they asked whether I regretted that,” says Steinem. “I thought, if I tell them the truth, I’ll lose them. But there was no point in lying, and so I said, ‘No, not for a millisecond’ – and they applauded. Because they don’t have the choice.”

I do commend her for fighting against female genital mutilation and for showing the dark side of Playboy's bunny ranches, but her advocacy for women obviously comes on her own terms, which is based on a zero-sum game. According to gender feminists, women can only succeed at the expense of their motherhood. That undermines both complementarity and healthy families.

Jane Fonda, another icon of empowered women, has made her own beautiful life of cosmetic surgery and artficial hormones -- so that she can still frolic with male friends despite her age:

In one of her most candid interviews, Fonda, 73, happily tells of taking the libido-boosting hormones and advises other women to try what is still a controversial treatment.

"Here's something I haven't said publicly yet: I discovered testosterone about three years ago, which makes a huge difference if you want to remain sexual and your libido has dropped," she says.

"Use testosterone. It comes in a gel, a pill or a patch."

But she adds: "I had to stop because it was giving me acne. It's one thing having plastic surgery, but it is quite another to have adolescence acne. That is going too far.'

Well, one must set some boundaries, I suppose. The trickle-down effect of examples like these is found all around us, in the promiscuity of youth, the broken families, the cohabitation (not only of the young, but with the parents of many children, who endure living with virtual strangers in their own homes). One might be confused by the seeming "good works" of Ms Steinem, who does go beyond herself to work on behalf of so many other women, but if you study the issues, her goal is singular: to free women from the shackles of culture, marriage, and children.

The heart of the difference is whether they advocate for persons or individuals. The former are social creatures integrated in a larger society, while the latter are atoms, floating freely and seeking their own goods. The Catholic message is always to remind us of the personhood of others, and through that prism to promote that which supports human dignity and a strong society. Ultimately, feminists have agitated for abortion, contraception, no-fault divorce, sexual license, micro-loans for women, and [many of them] for legalisation of prostitution. None of these things advance the dignity of the human person, nor do they strengthen relationships between men and women, and often they harm or kill children. But then, feminists don't think about the children, "no, not for a millisecond."

It's not over yet, and there is always time for repentance. God grant these two and their adoring fans the wisdom to see the truth about love, the rewards of selfless generosity, and the beauty of "man, fully alive."