In the previous post on electronic games, I wrote:

Electronic entertainment is one of the few realms in which boys can still be boys. I agree with Ron on this point. And, it’s a very important consideration.

But, it shouldn’t be that way. Virtual games, at least the obsessive and exclusive playing of them, are not a good replacement for other types of aggressive play that involve physical movement and real social interaction. The boy who plays games and only plays games is in an artificial world where he is not forced to respond to real people. In sports or idle rough-housing, there is a check on the isolating aspects of male aggression. There are real people interacting with each other and a boy is forced to react to them. That’s not the same as responding to someone in an electronic game.

In truly aggressive play, the boy’s energy is used and satisfied. He is ready to turn to things that involve a different sort of mental effort and patience. A boy can be sated  by aggressive physical play. Games are addictive and a boy never realizes he has had enough until it is too late to play outside or shoot hoops. He gets easily lost in them. That explains the irritability of boys who sit for long hours at the screen and their declining performance in school.

I think games in excess are much more destructive for younger boys than for older ones. They are used by parents as a form of babysitting. Many parents rely on them almost out of necessity because of the destruction of real community in which kids can congregate outside for pick-up games and boys can  engage in mischief.

My husband strongly believes that electronic games do not relieve male agression, but cause it to build. They are no more a complete outlet for healthy masculinity than watching football games on TV. He maintains that the idea that games serve a healthy function is equivalent to saying that pornography is a useful aid to male sexuality. The virtual experience replaces and perverts the thing itself.

I would like to add that I blame the over-use of electronic entertainment on women. They use electronic games as an easy form of childcare so they can go off and do their own thing. The departure of women from the home has caused the decline in normal outdoor play.

Ron writes:

Yep.

I’ve been a teacher and tutor my whole life, so I’ve seen a great many more of the consequences than have most people.

Rose writes:

I agree that there is little place for traditional masculinity in the west outside of video games, but it has little to do with feminism and much to do with the absence of the need for physical labor in the automated modern world. The majority of what men did to occupy their time since the agricultural revolution is now done by machines, and for many there is little left but diversion, to overcome pretend obstacles in virtual worlds is to overcome in the absence of real ones in the real one. The question of whether gamers can make good husbands can be subsumed in the larger one of how manly virtue can be acquired without the physical hardship or deprivation that the majority of men who have ever lived have had to overcome.

Laura writes:

In aristocratic societies there was always a class of men who did not engage in physical labor. The manual labor of slaves or peasants freed them from this. But, the aristocratic male did not become a couch potato. The ideal British gentleman, for instance, cultivated his manliness in sport. The physical work of farming was also not necessarily manly.  

A more compelling argument is that relatively few men today expect to be called to real physical combat, a much greater possibility for both the rich and the poor in previous eras. But, still I don’t think it was combat or physical labor that made masculinity. Rather, these things used masculinity, which is something that always exists in every place and time. Only societies which consciously set out to discourage or dismantle masculinity do not see it expressed in physical ways. Observe any small boy. He does not need you to provide footballs or swords so that he can be a boy. He is already a boy. He will act like one unless you consciously thwart this aspect of his nature. He will use whatever is at his disposal to engage in imagined combat or physical daring.

Boys are not allowed to develop naturally in our world and this isn’t the inevitable result of a more technological society. It’s the product of powerful forces in our society that do not want masculinity because its energy and assertiveness are a threat. Our school system has become an institutionalized and deliberate effort to cut off and suppress male initiative and exuberance. In many schools, boys are forbidden to touch each other at all while engaging in play. They also are given very little time for physical activity; in some schools, they are given none at all. In response, children are medicated to help them cope with their excess energy. Millions of boys are on prescription drugs such as Ritalin, which serves one purpose: to make them more passive and compliant. 

This suppression of masculinity is not simply the result of feminism. Instead, both feminism and the suppression of masculinity are part of a larger invisible effort, the unseen campaign to throttle liberty and any collective awareness of higher goods.

Rose writes:

“In aristocratic societies, there was always a class of men who did not engage in physical labor. The manual labor of slaves or peasants freed them from this.”

Yes, but they were often considered less than all man. This essay speaks of the “the classical notion of effeminacy as the result of luxury, idleness, and pampered self-indulgence…”

“In ancient Rome the terms mollis (soft) and effeminatus acquired special connotations of decadence and enervating luxury. By contrast the word virtus meant manliness. The Roman satirists took sardonic delight in flagellating the vices of luxury that were rampant among the upper classes of a nation that, once rude and warlike, had succumbed to the temptations that followed its successful conquest and plunder of the entire ancient world.”

The average American lives a life of ease, comfort, and safety that would have been unimaginable to those aristocrats. Peasants once far outnumbered the rich, but we’re all dandies now.

“The physical work of farming was also not necessarily manly.”

Even if you don’t think so, then you must admit that it helps one cultivate masculine virtues such as endurance, fortitude, and stoicism. Hard work builds character. Suffering and deprivation build character.

“He does not need you to provide footballs or swords so that he can be a boy. He is already a boy.”

And a boy he most likely remains, far into adulthood.

“Boys are not allowed to develop naturally in our world and this isn’t the inevitable result of a more technological society. It’s the product of powerful forces in our society that do not want masculinity because its energy and assertiveness are a threat.”

You’re right, but it is our unique technological situation that helps them succeed at a utopian project unthinkable in most times and places. Only now in a time of universal prosperity, when manhood is no longer a societal necessity but only one of many possible ‘lifestyle choices’, is the wide-spread suppression of masculinity possible.

Laura writes:

Yes, prosperity and technology have facilitated the desire to obliterate natural distinctions. Unfortunately, they haven’t rid us of the need  for these natural distinctions.

Modern life is not as coddling as you portray it. It’s still a rat race and a daily struggle. It provides plenty of opportunity for combat, though not of the physical kind. You say, “The average American lives a life of ease, comfort, and safety that would have been unimaginable to those aristocrats.”  Having flush toilets is not the same thing as ease. Sixteenth-century aristocrats would have been appalled at the meanness and sterility of American life. Modern man is not threatened with hunger, but he still requires vast energy and fortitude to survive and to fight the loss of civility and beauty that comes with modern technology. Our individualism exalts no one and puts every one in need of struggling for his place. The aristocrats of yesterday, despite their lack of cars and vaccines, would probably fall on their swords rather than live in an average American city today. The point is, modern life demands character.  There is as much need for masculinity.

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