It’s hard to put your finger on what’s at stake here without sounding like an Alt-Righter. But we’re on the side of truth, and the truth is that the Democratic Party and modern leftism seem to be out to destroy the family, traditional marriage, and the instinct to excel.
The leftist impulse to destroy Americans is all about politics. You don’t need a theory about how aliens are demons and Hillary Clinton drinks baby blood- although, seriously. Right? All you need to realize is that people who have something to lose and understand the value of hard work tend to vote conservative are being targeted by money-power interests.
They know straight people tend to vote conservative. They know Christians, men, parents, and those from the center of the country all tend to vote for conservatives. And so they have made it their business to degrade all of the norms of our society. They have got the whole country acting like the concerns of 2% of the population should be make-or-break-it issues for voters.
Now, they are making it all too clear. If they have been vague about it in the past, they are saying so out loud right now. They are saying men are bad, that being a man is bad, and that masculinity itself is akin to a mental illness. It’s not just coming from the culture makers, and it’s not just coming from academia- it’s coming from both.
By now you’ve almost certainly heard about the Gillette add.
The ad starts with a man alone, looking at himself in ruefully in the mirror. The ad goes on to portray white men as caustic louts, encouraging violence, silencing and harassing women, bullying the weak. There is literally an endless row of men watching two boys fight while standing behind barbecue grills and saying “boys will be boys.”
Let’s get something straight. “Boys will be boys” was never an excuse for bad behavior. It is an expression of exasperation.
But it gets worse. Then the ad goes on to portray scene after scene of men behaving badly around women. It portrays men as violent abusers. It strongly suggests that maleness is a threat to everyone else. It also suggests that women are all weak- every last one of them.
But Gillette isn’t alone in disparaging your father, your son, your husband, your best friend. Now the American Psychological Association (APA) has joined the culture war to officially pathologize “traditional masculinity.”
In a 36 page report, the APA says, “Traditional masculinity ideology has been shown to limit males’ psychological development, constrain their behavior, result in gender role strain and gender role conflict and negatively influence mental health and physical health.”
In other words, it has called traditional masculinity a mental illness that harms those who are characterized by it. But it goes further of course. It also conflates traditional masculinity with violence.
They write, “The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful. Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors.”
So, if a person is in any way masculine in the “traditional” sense, then the APA is advising the society you live in to be wary of you, to be afraid of you, and to deprive you of opportunities to develop yourself. In their eyes, a man is a miscreant beast- harmful to himself and dangerous to others.
And so, if you enjoy sports, if you work hard to support your family or to obtain some goal, if you endeavor to be strong in body, in mind, or both- the APA is putting the label of mental illness squarely on you. And they are placing the crosshairs of their dangerous trade on the heads of any boy or man you respect, love, or admire.
When you see this attack coming from so many angles, the media, the academy, and advertisers you know one thing for certain. You know it is not the assertion of an organically developed and earnest observation. It is an attack on the core of a culture.
We’ve seen this before, just before the fall of Rome. The men were told to soften themselves while barbarians took aid from within the city.
