IN ITS latest issue, Newsweek, as if in a burst of originality, calls on American men to buck up and be more like girls: more housework, more nurturing, and more of the jobs traditional associated with women. Now, it’s one thing to say that men must do feminine work out of dire necessity, but it’s quite another to say this represents something good, as Newsweek does.

The egalitarian life the writers envision is a marriage breaker. It leads to continual domestic strife or domination of the man by the woman. Women are inherently better at childcare and household management, and so the typical man will remain forever under a wife’s tutelage in these areas. Therefore, when men do these things at home, it is often as if he is doing them for the woman. In short, the idea of equality is a myth.

                                                                                     — Comments —

Robin writes:

“Moreover the Lord Saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet…Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will discover their secret parts… 

And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty. 

Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war… 

And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.” 

Isaiah 3:16, 17, 24-25 and 4:1 King James Bible 

Around the world, men are falling by the sword of feminism and sadly, it is only he (or she) who has an ear to hear who “see” the truth behind the terrible and subtle deception. Of course, I am hardly surprised by such an article. I am, however, shocked by a recent poll amongst some of my peers which revealed that almost all of them actually agree with this garbage. Honestly, I can think of two couples in my sphere of influence who live as traditionalists in every way. The remainder of the married women think it perfectly normal and natural to begin to mold their husbands into wives as soon as the honeymoon is over. Often, they have done so years before during bouts of cohabitation whereby they have utterly emasculated these poor souls until they are flitting about the house when their wives arrive home from work, apologizing that every load of laundry isn’t finished yet! The single women scoff at my advice, which often includes obtaining a good copy of Fascinating Womanhood from the library and experiencing a sort of “soaking” in it for a good year before even attempting to date again. They simply aren’t worthy of a good man, for what they really desire is a good girlfriend! 

As you often speak very clearly in your posts, where women dominate, men retreat. Hence my Scripture reference above. When will these monstrous beasts called feminists retreat? Will they not cease fire until they have utterly transformed society and turned God’s created order completely upside-down? The article states that men need to be trained to be “nurturers.” Hogwash. What really needs to happen is a swift and immediate reversal in women’s voting “rights,” followed by an all-out indoctrination “meal” in the Word of God on Biblical masculinity and femininity. Dessert would be a twelve-month concentration camp of Fascinating Womanhood, perhaps facilitated by Dr. Laura, since she’s almost off the radio circuit. Maybe that sort of treatment would beat the beast into humility and submission, and once again we could return to civility in American society.

You may be able to discern that things like this just get my pantaloons in a bit of a state of disarray. Perhaps I should just allow God to take care of it in His time, and be done with it. I cannot help but be convinced, however, that He has called us to be a city on a hill. A light shining in the darkness. Thus, all I can do is get up every day and live my small, traditionalist (reforming and ever-repenting ex-feminazi) lifestyle and open my mouth when given the opportunity to speak the truth to some poor, unsuspecting drone who has been fed this line of garbage and wonders why her life is so pitiful and lonely. To her I say: my husband has changed less diapers than he has fingers, but he busts his bum six days a week to put food on our table and diapers on our daughter’s bum so that she can be with her mother and not a stranger for $800 a month; my husband doesn’t do dishes, but his hands and heart bear the weight of the world when he steps out the door to work, knowing he and God are going to have to provide for our little household – and yes, he took three months off to be with our daughter when she was born, but he didn’t want everyone else to pay for it. He chose it, and he sacrificed for it personally. He is a man, and I respect how much more manly he becomes every day as he takes pride in his position.  

Laura writes:

Amen, sister.

Many men think they will please their wives by doing lots of housework and, in some rare cases this is true and all works out well, and of course every man who is not wealthy will have to do some work around the house, but the idea that the average man will please his wife by doing lots of housework is false. It is a lie. Yes, of course, women will say they want men to do half the work of house and childcare. No woman under the influence of feminism and working outside the home  would say otherwise; if she were to say otherwise that might let her husband off the hook. But when it comes right down to it, women want to be in charge of these things, they want them done their way. Also, very few women are attracted to servility in a man. Sooner or later, as a man tries to do these tasks to his wife’s standards, he takes on a very unappealing servility and wonders why she is irritated at him.

Now, as I said, very few women will admit to all this. Most human beings want everything. Women want men who are both servants and masters. [Modern men want women who are assertive enough to make lots of money but submissive enough to please them. They want to have everything too.]  Unfortunately, they cannot have both.

Brendan writes:

Indeed. Both sexes do want everything in the other these days, instead of dealing with a man or a woman on the other side of the table, they want a manwoman or a womanman. Doesn’t work out so well, in practice, really. I also concur that when a man is an equalist around the house it often turns out badly because no matter what the woman is de facto “in charge” in that area, and the husband becomes her de facto subordinate. That isn’t sexy for most women, at least not in the long-run. We all remember Sandra Tsing Loh singing the praises of her helpful-around-the-house-and-good-father ex-husband by describing him as her “kitchen bitch.” At least she was honest enough to admit it, unlike many others who have similar feelings but keep them stifled so that the current PC dominance can remain unchallenged.

To me the most troubling thing about the article, however, was that it really didn’t provide any compelling reason why men should do as the article suggests. Towards the end we get a tepid few paragraphs about how it would be good for women if men did this, or how it would be good for gender equality and so on. But nothing about how it would be good for the men themselves, as men. I suspect that the reason for this is that the authors couldn’t really come up with anything other than the beneficial impact on women, feminism and gender equality if men were to behave as suggested. The other alternative is that men exist simply to serve the interests of women and children, and that therefore no other motivational explanation is necessary or desirable — perhaps an even scarier thought.

Laura writes:

They say men have no choice because the economy has changed.

If that were true, and this were the only reason men should change, then we wouldn’t have to pretend the situation was beneficial and we would work to find ways to recover normalcy. If there were a water shortage, we wouldn’t say that a water shortage has benefits and we really don’t need that much water anyway. 

Brendan writes:

As you say, it isn’t very compelling to state that men have no choice, and that therefore behaving as recommended is beneficial. It’s a classic non-sequitur really.

But even beyond that, it isn’t really true. There are still jobs for men in the trades, for example, that are not feminine, do not require a lot of education, and are well-paying. There are other male-typical jobs which are either dangerous or dirty or both, which still offer options for men. I think the issue is that we have a lot of girlie-men in the “middle” with nothing to do.  They aren’t up to mastering a trade or being a firefighter or EMT, and they also don’t have the brainpower to be doctors or engineers or what have you, so they are in the middle. The problem there is not that there aren’t male-type jobs available, it’s that these men have been groomed to be unsuitable for them by our education system — a system which works well for rather smart people as it grooms them for knowledge worker jobs, but doesn’t work well for the mid-pack men in particular, because they do not learn the kinds of life skills that would serve them in appropriate jobs, and instead are left with also-ran white collar Dilbert situations that are dead-ends in every way possible.

Still, as you say, to extol this as being beneficial simply belies an ideological bias in the extreme.

Karen I. writes:

When my husband tries to help out a lot around our home, I feel insulted. It is as though he is saying I did not do a good enough job.

Karen I. adds:

Brendan’s characterization of jobs for “mid-pack” men is incorrect and unkind. He seems to think that manly-men hold either dangerous firefighter type jobs or are doctors or lawyers. 

There are millions of men who hold the type of job that Brendan looks down on and for Brendan to say these men “toil at jobs that are dead-ends in every way possible” is wrong. The men doing the types of jobs Brendan obviously looks down on are not doing the jobs of their dreams, but who is these days, really? They are supporting their families, often better than blue-collar workers and with less strain on their wives, who don’t have to worry sick every time they leave for work that they will be injured or worse on the job that day. They may even be doing a better job of being there for their children than doctors and lawyers, who must work very long hours. 

The men who hold the jobs Brendan disparages do not tend to put their families through the cyclical unemployment so often faced by blue-collar workers. I am sure there are many “manly-men” currently laid-off from the construction or auto industries that would love to report to a “Dilbert-type” job tomorrow instead of collecting an unemployment check. 

In this economy especially, it is wrong for anyone, man or woman, to insult good men who go to work day in and day out at honest jobs to support their families. Oh, they also pay their taxes, which help support the laid-off tough guys and their families, all without a word of gratitude from anyone. If the emasculation of men is to stop, we all need to stop criticizing good working men, whatever their job may be.

[See more discussion of this post here.]

George writes:

I’ve noticed many comments about housework and womanly duties. While I am certainly anti-feminist and despise modern liberalism, I find the idea of housework as being primarily for women to be at odds with my own life experience. I have lived on my own for a number of years now, and have (fortunately for this introvert) never had roommates. Which means that if I wanted my house cleaned or my laundry done or my grocery purchased I was the one who had to do them. I’ve never found these tasks to be particularly emasculating any more than I find proper hygiene to be emasculating.

The only time I came up against any gender issues was one time at the grocery store. A rotund woman, of unpleasant disposition, pointed to me with her crooked finger and screeched at her husband in a way that only harridans can do: “See, other men go grocery shopping.” I looked her husband in the eye and could see his soul being ground under at that moment and said to him: “I don’t have a wife to do it for me.”

It’s never been said to me before, but I have to wonder if how I live could be seen as threatening to a potential woman: she can clearly see I can take care of myself (and my cat!) without her assistance so perhaps this could make her feel as though she was not needed or needed less. I’m not sure.

Laura writes:

No, I don’t think the average woman would at all feel threatened by a man who can take care of himself. That is an attractive quality. And, obviously men are capable of doing housework, just as women are capable of being CEOs of large corporations. What we were talking about is the ideal division of duties. Even there, some men are better at housework than their spouses. We are discussing the norm, the general rule. Couples need to have workable patterns. The model of sharing all duties creates tension and uncertainty; it does not recognize normal distinctions. The average woman is better at household management and childcare than the average man. Despite years of intense indoctrination, the supermarkets are mostly filled with women.

By the way, my own husband took care of himself for almost twenty years before we were married. He certainly managed his life okay. But he did not have a pleasant domestic existence. In marrying, however, he gained more than a housekeeper. The housework I do is also the outward manifestation of love and gratitude.

Please follow and like us: