The Knowledge Base Spreads

A long time reader and commenter has clued me in to a series on the Orthodox Blog “Russian Faith” concerning attracting a spouse. The first post in the series is “How to Attract a Christian Spouse-Marriage Advice from a Christian Dad.” The author cites my LAMPS/PSALM model favorably at one point, although he adds on a final S to include Spirituality. I think I will respond to that point sometime later, as it is good to understand what my model is, and what my model isn’t.

He then wrote a follow up post, title Attractiveness: Beauty is Not Just On the Inside. It is very Un-PC in all of the right ways. A snippet from it:

A woman’s physical attractiveness is the most immediate and pressing point of interest to most men. Morally and spiritually, this can be quite dangerous — we all know very attractive women whose spiritual lives are a mess — but attractiveness itself is central to attraction by most men (whether godly or not).

A young lady may be a devout Christian, but if she is not physically attractive, the vast majority of men will pass her over.

This is absolutely true, and something which unfortunately is not taught enough in Christian circles (of any faith tradition). The reverse is of course true for men as well, and is one of the reasons why we have the Christian side of the ‘sphere.

One thing I found very striking about the second post is the photos. They showcase beautiful women who are very feminine and modest in appearance. Not the vulgar “sexiness” the world loves to push out.

I will be curious to see where the author takes the remaining posts. At the same time, I am already pleased to see this kind of article happen. Especially because it showcases my LAMPS/PSALM model and the understanding that goes with it. Hopefully more Christian outlets will take advantage of those kinds of resources in the future.

Masculine Monday- To Command And Obey

It has been a long while since I wrote one of these post, and thus long overdue. Today I want to examine the subject of authority and leadership as it relates to masculinity.

Before I continue, I would direct my reader’s attention to this post by Cane Caldo. It helped stimulate the present post.

I believe that one of the essential qualities that makes a man a man is his ability to function effectively within a hierarchical structure. It is his ability to lead others below him in authority, in subjection, and his ability to follow orders of those in authority above him. In my opinion a man is not a man unless he is firmly capable of both task.

To Command and Obey go hand in hand.

From my experience, most men who come across as unmanly fail in at least one, if not both, of those areas. When it comes to authority, they come across either as weak or overbearing. And when it comes to obedience, they are either rebellious or spineless drones without initiative.

Creating proper men, that is, instilling in them the essence of command and obedience, must start at an early age. Deviations from acceptable behavior must be spotted and corrected. Creating a man is not an instant process, nor an automatic one. It can, I think, be likened to the forging of a sword- a process which takes time, patience and hard work. Yet the end result is a sharp tool, waiting to be used.

Unfortunately we don’t have the structures in place anymore for this transformation to take place on a mass scale. Point in fact, we have been actively working to dismantle them for generations. And that process yet continues.

So it is up to individuals and small groups to continue this essential work. Men who are fathers of boys are especially demanded upon. Most of the work is up to them- and in a hostile work environment, no less.

I would like my readers, especially fathers, to give their thoughts on the subject. Both in terms of general views on whether I am right or not, and also as to specifics on how to achieve this.

Power And Control

Zippy has a new post up which demands a follow-up: With great power comes great incontinence. Short and to the point, I am tempted to repeat all of it. Instead I will merely quote what I see as the key parts. They are:

 

• The most primal power of men is violence

• The most primal power of women is sex

• [O]ur society is willing to punish crimes of violence but is not willing to punish crimes of sex

I think it should be readily apparent to all my readers, but I will repeat it all the same-

Society and Civilization can only exist when there are structures in place which control the base, primal natures of human beings. Failure to control that primal nature leads to savagery in the end, and that means chaos. Towards that end, the building and the maintenance of civilization requires that the primal nature of both men and women alike must be strictly controlled and regulated.

For men our most primal power is violence. Thus, to control our primal nature requires the strict regulation of male violent tendencies. Fail to do so, and you have disorder.

For women, their most primal power is sex. Thus, to control their primal nature requires the strict regulation of female sexual tendencies. Fail to do so, and you have disorder.

The problem right now is what Zippy notes- we regulate violence extensively, but not sexuality. The result is that women are now the primary source of disorder in the “Civilized West.” This will not change until sexuality is regulated with the same fierceness as violence is.

Unfortunately, what we see now is that efforts are being made to double down on the regulation of the male capacity for violence. And further efforts are being made to double down on the deregulation of female sexual tendencies. Rollo has a new post  where this is discussed in the context of The War on Paternity. While most previous efforts to ensure paternity in the past have been dismantled, new technology has changed the field. DNA testing means that a man really can be certain, for the first time in history, that a child is truly his. That naturally conflicts with female sexual power. Thus, it has to go. Hence we are seeing increased efforts to limit when paternity testing can take place, and when it can be used to change a man’s situation (legally, at least).

I have some more thoughts I may add to this post as I develop them. In the meantime feel free to comment below.

The High Ground

I came to an epiphany recently, and I lay the blame at Cane Caldo’s feet. Three of his recent posts made something “CLICK” inside my head and I can’t let go of it. The three posts are the following:

Real Men Don’t Impede Her Desires

Her Buck Stops Here

A Caned Response to the Nashville StatementsA Caned Response to the Nashville Statements

Read all three (they aren’t that long) before continuing. The rest will make a lot more sense that way. Each one, in its own way, address the nature of men and women, and how we are to relate to each other. A (very) brief summary of them could be as follows:

• Men are no longer able to tell women No in any meaningful way
• Men can no longer enforce male spaces, and in fact none exist in any meaningful way
• Men in Christian leadership positions (and in general) won’t teach the truth about women in marriage in any meaningful way

The bit in particular which was the “light bulb” moment for me was this:

Where is the article in which they deny that wives should be irreverent, rebellious, or usurpers? Where do they affirm that wives are to be sexually available to their husbands except for agreement of a limited time? What is more important to marriage than that the wife be submissive to her husband? These are serious and timely issues of marriage worthy of writing in these statements; more so than sodomy and transgenderism.

Cane is right, these are more serious issues. And I think I understand why. Perhaps he has already figured this out, or maybe I am going beyond the scope of his original idea. But everything makes sense to me now. You see, you cannot win on issues like “gay marriage” or “transgenderism” after yielding up the high ground in this battle.

Let me explain.

To begin with, high ground often has two different common meanings. The first is a “safe place”, out of the reach of danger. The second is a height which has strategic military value. It is the second meaning I intend. After all, we are in a war- a spiritual war. Now, the war has already been won, thankfully. However, the fighting has yet to stop. In some respects it is like the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. It was fought after the war officially ended. And while it didn’t change the outcome of the war, it was still meaningful to the men who fought in it. And so it is today- we are fighting a battle in a war the enemy has already lost. But he can still inflict casualties- take souls – and so he fights on. No surprise, really- he was a murderer from the beginning.

The strategic high ground in this battle was twofold- the nature of men and women, and the rights, roles and responsibilities of men and women in marriage. Those two things were places to make a last stand- a metaphorical hill to die on. Unfortunately, they were yielded to the enemy generations ago. And when they were, the battle was lost at that point.

Why are they necessary positions to hold? To begin with, they lay the foundations for any defense of everything to come after. Lets start with “transgenderism.”

The whole point of that particular “theory” is that there are no fixed genders. Male and female, man and woman, are social constructs. They exist because society says they exist. Take that away, and people revert to whatever they want.  On an intellectual level, a strong, vigorous defense of the nature of the masculine and the feminine will over course reveal this to be the rubbish it is. But as is the case with so many things in life, personal experiences which shape someone will trump intellectual argument.

For transgenderism to succeed, people need to grow up where man and woman don’t really mean much. And how do you get that? Simple- you create a society with the following:

• No task or vocations or opportunities, and so on, which are the sole prerogative of men or women.
• Men and women are interchangeable in the various roles and positions which people occupy in life.
• You eliminate any spaces which are reserved for men or women.
• You eliminate any activities which are reserved for men or women.

And on and on.

When this is the society you have- the society we have today- then men and women essentially become interchangeable- fungible even. If that is the case, then the concepts of “man” and “woman” will lose any sense of meaning in the minds of those exposed to it. And this is what everyone is exposed to these days, especially youth. It should come as no surprise that “transgenderism” is on the rise right now. They don’t see any real difference between men and women, save minor biological differences, and those can be changed by surgery. The truth is, “transgenderism” was an inevitable byproduct of this organization of society. It was just a matter of time.

Let’s look now “gay marriage” in the context of the rights, roles and responsibilities of men and women in marriage. In the past they were clearly defined. Now, no one dares to defend any real difference whatsoever. At least, a meaningful difference. What is the end result of this? Well, when men and women have the same rights, roles and responsibilities, they become… you guessed it, fungible. They can be swapped out without changing the fundamental makeup of the marriage unit. After all, husband and wife are both equal, right? And since they are equal, they both can do whatever needs doing, right? And are deserving of equal, well, everything, right? In that context husband and wife are no longer meaningful terms.

Instead husband and wife are replaced in the minds of people with “spouse 1” and “spouse 2” [Update: Reader Lost Patrol suggests Partner 1 and Partner 2 work better, and I agree. I’m going to update the rest of the post to fit that.] And of course if mother and father are also essentially the same- equal- then they are likewise fungible. And so you get “parent 1″ and parent 2.” Well, if spouse/parent replaces husband/father and wife/mother, you get some interesting outcomes. Because, after all, if marriage in the eyes of people is Partner1 + Partner 2, then does it really matter who happens to be Partner 1 and Partner 2? Of course not! It is all about two people who love each other who decide to becomes spouses.

And when you think about it, there isn’t really any reason to restrict it to just two spouses together. After all, love is the important part, right? As long as you have that, the nature and number of spouses doesn’t really matter. Dwell on where that line of thinking will take you.

I could continue at length, but I think I’ve made my point. Without a viable, effective and vocal defense of those two principles, nothing else can be defended. The battle will be lost- guaranteed. And it isn’t merely about logic. In fact, I believe that logic takes a distant backseat compared to the way that people’s common experiences affect their perception of the issues. Those experiences shape their views to a degree that rational argument never does.

If Christians want to have any, and mean any chance of turning this battle around, then those two strategic positions must be re-taken. There is no other recourse.

 

Masculine Monday- A Positive Approach

Rollo Tomassi has kindly reminded me that his newest book- Positive Masculinity, is now available. I would encourage my readers to give it a look. I haven’t had the time to grab or read it myself, but I intend to when time permits. A review will hopefully follow shortly after. While Rollo and I don’t agree on a fair number of things, I find that his work is always worth reading- if only to provoke one to reexamine his own beliefs.

Works like his are all the more necessary in this age, when masculinity is openly derided and masculine role models are all but extinct. Rediscovering the ways of the past will be the work of generations, and an endeavor that must be started right away.

It is especially necessary for Christian men to stand up and establish examples of Christian masculinity. For the most part most of the role-models out there, the purported Christian ones, that is, are basically just secular examples with a dash of Christianese painted on. That needs to change. I hope to explore how in future posts in this long dormant series.

 

Random Thought on Hardship/Suffering

Thanks to some recent comments on this blog, and some e-mails discussions I have been participating in, I have been re-reading two of my posts lately:

The Misery of Too Much Comfort

The Necessity of Suffering

I have been thinking about those posts, and what I’ve written. The ideas I explored there were never fully developed, and I know I need to examine them again.

One idea that I had was the realization that suffering was still not necessarily the right word to use. I am still not sure on what word is right, although I am leaning towards hardship now. But that is a discussion for another post. Instead, I want to explore a rather simple idea with this particular post:

No man of worth has ever become that way without enduring hardship.

I cannot think of any man who is an exception to this rule. Indeed, I think that enduring and overcoming hardship is an essential component of becoming a man of worth.

At the same time, I think that men can, depending on their life circumstances, avoid suffering and hardship more easily than women. As someone recently pointed out to me, women, by virtue of their biology, will endure suffering on a fairly regular basis for much of their life. And certain other events and circumstances also involve suffering, and more specifically, pain. We men don’t really have that- unavoidable pain as a result of biology. At least, I cannot think of any examples (please correct me in the comments if I am wrong).

All of which together means that men can, if they are “lucky”, avoid a lot of pain, suffering and hardship. At the same time, our avoiding that pain, suffering and hardship is often the worst thing for men. It is a sure fire way to create a spoiled brat, and a pathetic weakling. At least, that is my experience. I am curious what my readers think on the matter.

Market Watch

In my previous post, A Poor Example,  I mentioned a post that Scott and Elspeth wrote about how June Cleaver might be unmarriageable right now. What I want to do with this post is make a series of observations based on what they mentioned in their post, as well as in the comments. I will likely expand on it over time, as I have a chance to re-read the comments. This won’t be an in-depth post, but rather more of a list with perhaps a comment or two of my own.

So here are some of my observations:

• The Market for devout Christians, men and women alike, is awful. I wrote previously on this topic in my Market Failure series of posts. You can read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 via the links. As for who has it worse, I think that is mostly an academic exercise. My gut says men more than women, but not by a huge amount.
•  Geography play a huge role in the difficulties of the marriage market right now. Different geographic locations are more or less favorable to men or women. My suspicion is that where I live the ratio between marriageable men and women heavily tilts to men, and that of course makes the market tougher for men.
• Demographics also plays a significant role. As various Christian groups have splintered, and there is even more separation in belief within groups, the overall pool of eligible mates has dropped precipitously. So while absolute numbers might be up, the actual pool is perhaps smaller than it has been for perhaps even centuries.
• Most Christian parents are not raising devout Christian children. Much less marriageable ones.
• Young men are much less interested in marriage than they were in the past. Having a few more years under my belt since I started blogging, I have seen this more and more. Younger men are just less interested in marriage. The why of this is worthy of a whole post of its own.
• Too many people are doing too little to make marriage happen these days. Marriage needs to be a matter for the whole community.

 

Also, the answer to this:

Is it possible that parents of the last several generations, responding to the cultural cues from blue-pill pastors and other sources have raised both sex children to be pretty useless at “traditional” marriage, and therefore a different approach to finding matches for them may be required?

…is yes and yes.

More to come as I think on it.

Update: A few more observations-

• The market is seriously hampered by the amount of deception going on. The worst lies, from what I have seen, tend to be those that people tell themselves. Self-deception makes hit harder to diagnose problems, among other ills.
• Introverts and shy people are especially vulnerable in the market right now. Given how few effective venues there are for meeting eligible mates, each one has to count that much more. For introverts, that is much more difficult.
• I am among the most the most “pro-marriage” of guys in the Christian manosphere. At least as it applies to my own life. Only a couple might be at the same level as me, such as Deep Strength. I don’t know if that was the case originally, but it seems to be the case now. And even despite my subjective “gun-ho” approach I am still very cautious.

Masculine Monday- Defanging The Dragon

Somehow I missed this post by Bonald over at Throne and Alter back in January. In a surprise me (at least to me), Bonald was able to take My Little Pony and create an effective social observation and argument from it. Mind you, with the great name for the title, he had better have.

I encourage everyone to read the whole thing, if only to make sense of the parts I am about to quote:

In the season 2 episode “Dragon Quest”, Spike, finding his alienation from his nature unbearable, sets out to join the Great Dragon Migration and learn “what it means to be a dragon”.  He meets up with a gang of unsupervised male teenage dragons at a volcano.  The gang tease Spike and subject him to a number of difficult and embarrassing tests to prove his worth.  Three of Spike’s pony friends, watching in disguised, are shocked to find Spike responding with enthusiasm.  What’s brilliant about this episode is that it’s shown from the perspective of these girl ponies who can’t understand the psychological forces at play.  Probably most of the little girls watching don’t understand it either.  Spike is getting his first taste of male companionship and camaraderie.  Having to prove himself is important to him, although he is frightened and probably doesn’t understand it himself.  What the ponies don’t recognize, but adult viewers will, is that although the teenage dragons are acting tough with Spike, they’re actually showing quite a bit of restraint and accommodation to this baby.  Belly flopping into lava is not actually impressive, but it lets them give him the sense of having earned membership.  Men being the ritualistic sex, Spike is them put through an initiation ritual, followed by a night of revelry with his new companions.  Again, the ponies are horrified.  How can Spike want to stay with these awful dragons?

…

It is a disturbing ending, at least to those who understand the episode fully and realize the magnitude of the tragedy.  There is nothing wrong per se with the moral principles the ponies have given Spike.  What the ponies haven’t given him, because they cannot give it to him, is a way to relate these abstract moral imperatives to his own nature, a way to see his own abilities and inclinations in their light.  So it is as well with boys in today’s world, deprived of natural law and traditional culture.

What we are seeing in our society right now is an ongoing process to defang dragons- that is, men. To strip them of their masculinity, with special care and attention given to the male capacity for violence. Which just happens to be the subject for today.

I’ve written about men and violence before, including in this Masculine Monday series. Today’s post is a chance to discuss the subject again, as it has been some time. Back in July of 2013 I wrote The Latent Threat: Male Dominance and the Capacity for Violence. In that post I examined, among other things, the latent male potential for violence and how it intersects with sexual attractiveness. One section of that post:

It is easy for men to forget how much more powerful we are than women. We just take our strength for granted. But because they are the weaker vessel women must approach the world in a very different way. Sometimes they express this consciously, but most of the time subconsciously. Women are fearful because they must be fearful, they can’t defend themselves like a man can. How do women compensate for this?

Well, they act as a herd with other women, for one. You ever notice how oftentimes women will all go to the restroom together? As a group? Myself, I see it all the time. What I’ve never seen is men do the same thing. I suspect the reason for this behavior is because women subconsciously know that when you are relieving yourself you are even more vulnerable than normal, and so for protection women will group up, counting on numbers to protect them. Men, who can both relieve themselves more easily and are more capable of defending themselves, experience no such compulsion.

But the most important way that women compensate for their weakness is by associating with men. But not just men in general. Or any man. No, the Man. The Alpha Male. The big, strong man who can defend her, and her children, from harm. The Man who makes her feel Safe. This is where a man’s capacity for violence is important, even essential. Because a man who has a strong capacity for violence is a man who can keep his woman safe. Of course, sometimes this violence is directed at the woman herself, a perfect example of unintended consequences. Yet even those women who suffer at the hands of their man will often go back to him, perhaps driven by the subconscious belief that while may hurt her, he can also protect her from greater harms at the same time.

In my 13th Masculine Monday post I examined violence in a more limited context:

I suspect that I were to try and create a list of different traits that men “need,” that it would generate a lot of debate. Some would say I am missing traits, while others would argue that I am including some unnecessarily. There is one trait, however, that I would wager very few would disagree with if it were included in such a list.

That trait? A capacity for focused, disciplined and effective violence.

Note that I say a capacity for violence, not a propensity for violence. Those are two very different things.

There is a time and place for all things, including violence and refraining from violence. But I would argue that a man who is incapable of exercising violence when needed isn’t much of a man at all.

Looking at those posts again, and Bonald’s most recent posts, it reaffirms for me again  that violence and masculinity are inextricably linked. Any attempt to separate a capacity for violence from men is to separate them from, and deny, their basic masculinity. And as I think on it, it really isn’t just a capacity for violence. There just is a certain amount of violence that is  natural to masculine behavior. And there is nothing wrong with that.

Something which our society tries vehemently to deny, of course. Violence is wrong. It is EVIL. Period. End of sentence.

But we men know better, or at least, we should. Force and the exertion of force -violence- is part and parcel of being a man. In my opinion, we need to start standing up for that. We need to defend the truth that “boys will be boys” and rough-house each other. And everything else about men which is inherently forceful and turbulent.

And no, I am not defending violence for the sake of violence. There is good violence, and bad violence. But good violence exists, and not only has a right to exist, it needs to exist.

The alternative is a bunch of dragons raised to be ponies.

The Gamma-ization Of Superman

I have been meaning to write this post for some time after numerous discussions withNSR, but never got around to it. However, Cane Caldo’s latest post, The Judgement of Freaks, finally convinced me to get something down on electronic paper. Cane’s post exams Sci-Fi/Fantasy fans and their nature and how it interacts with the market. The part that interested me was this:

But if we talk about the collective of fans, a great many of whom are strange and ill-formed, then I must say that it does have to be this way. What these strange and ill-formed SF&F fans want is a structure of the superficial. The less substantive the better, for under it they can do a couple things.

1. Transform their crippling weirdness into a minor flaw which is subsumed under the temporarily-irrelevant category of real life.
2. Practice a wide assortment of perversions disguised as make believe.

That’s why there are so many freaks in the comicbook store. That’s why there are so many freaks at the Star Trek conventions. That’s why there are so many freaks at Renaissance festivals, comic conventions, anime conventions…there are a lot of freak conventions.

I have no idea how much experience Cane has with this sort of folk. I’ve always had the impression he was a jock in high-school, and not the nerd type. Unfortunately, I was the nerd type, and so I am all too familiar with these freaks. And freaks they are.

Oh, not all of them. I’ve been to comic shops and conventions and Ren fairs and the like. Not everyone there is a freak. But plenty are. Perhaps even a majority at many of these events/places. The thing is, this didn’t always use to be the case.

Years ago comics used to be much more “mainstream,” for want of a better term. But somewhere along the way that changed. Both the fans and the writers started to shift in their overall make-up, and it shows. This structure of the superficial became more predominant, and then finally dominant. Depth is out of the question in most places, and what “depth” you do get is typical SJW political drivel for the most part. The exceptions are just that, exceptions.

From my perspective comics started as a form of light fantasy entertainment. Superpowers sort of took the place of magic, and allowed for fun and interesting characters and stories. But then as the fandom and writers changed, this shifted. Light fantasy morphed into what I can only think is escapism. People created weirder and weirder characters and situations because they themselves were weirder and weirder. As for the existing characters, they were transformed in varying ways, few of them good.

Superman provides an excellent example of this. As originally conceived and as the character was written in the golden and silver age, Superman fits many of the qualities that are often in these parts called “Alpha.” I mean, really, he is the Alpha. Strong, confident, dominant and admired/envied by everyone. And of course women throw themselves at him.

But over time the character of Superman has changed. Some of this might owe to the Comics Code, put in place in the mid 50s, which made things “tamer.” However, I think that only helped lay the groundwork- it didn’t actually lead to the character changing. Instead, it was a new generation of writers (and the fans with them) that transformed the character.

An interesting fact that NSR told me is that DC Comics originally figured they had only a 3-5 year run with most of their readers, who happened to be young boys. After that the boys would start getting interested in girls and their interest in comics would wane. Apparently that influenced the business model. However, at some point super-fans showed up and started to make noises about continuity and the need to collect every comic and the like. Over time these fans became writers, and they started to change the character.

I mention this because it seems to me that the super-fans, if we can call them that, evidently didn’t get caught up in the whole “chasing girls” thing. This to me suggests that they were “out there”, perhaps in a socio-sexual way. Enter Vox’s Socio-Sexual Hierarchy. I don’t subscribe to it in full, but I think there are some useful descriptions there. Here is the description of Gamma:

The introspective, the unusual, the unattractive, and all too often the bitter. Gammas are often intelligent, usually unsuccessful with women, and not uncommonly all but invisible to them, the gamma alternates between placing women on pedestals and hating the entire sex. This mostly depends upon whether an attractive woman happened to notice his existence or not that day. Too introspective for their own good, gammas are the men who obsess over individual women for extended periods of time and supply the ranks of stalkers, psycho-jealous ex-boyfriends, and the authors of excruciatingly romantic rhyming doggerel. In the unlikely event they are at the party, they are probably in the corner muttering darkly about the behavior of everyone else there… sometimes to themselves. Gammas tend to have have a worship/hate relationship with women, the current direction of which is directly tied to their present situation. However, they are sexual rejects, not social rejects.

What I suspect is that over time many of the writers in the comics world started to fit this description. Their own nature as “Gammas” influenced their writing. They projected some of their own nature onto the characters they were writing. This is something you can see in the character of Superman. Some examples of the changes:

• Superman was always an alien, but he still fit in while on Earth. During his Gammization, however, two things happened. Some writers had him basically disregard his Kryptonian heritage- an example of deliberately denying pride in one’s ancestry. Other writers went to the other extreme, and emphasized his alien nature. They made him feel as if he was an outcast/outsider- which is just how many of them happened to feel.
• The way that Superman interacted with women, especially as Clark Kent, changed. In the beginning Clark was always mild-mannered, but his bumbling nature with women was also a disguise. Superman actually enjoyed pretending to be the fool who didn’t “get” women. It was all a joke to him. But over time that disguise sort of disappeared, and he lost his humor at playing people. Instead he was confused and conflicted with how he should interact with women. This can be seen in the original Superman movie from the 70s.
• After 1986, Superman was often displaced within his own comics. Other characters would be the ones taking all the action, and he would just stand there. Along with this came a huge decrease in his power. While Superman certainly had some “power creep” in the early days, he was almost neutered once the Gammas took over the writing.

There is more, but those examples in particular stand out. Putting all of it together, we have seen Superman as a character be twisted by a wave of writers less masculine , and more freakish, than the ones who came before. Of course, he isn’t the only character so affected. And it is important to note that many comics writers from the start were freaks who wanted ways to live out their perversions- see the character of Wonder Woman, for example.

Unfortunately, I see this trend only continuing. So those of us who enjoy the old comics- the light fantasy and not the shallow escapism and perversions of today, are sort of out of luck. At least we have the old ones to enjoy.

Masculine Monday- Sympathy And Understanding

[Men only]

One of the hurdles that men face today in navigating the Marriage Marketplace is the widespread ignorance of most people where the MMP is concerned. For a variety of reasons most of the people that a man interacts with don’t have a clue how the MMP really works. This applies as much to married men as to men seeking to marry. Most people just don’t get it.

Which drives me to the subject of this post- men shouldn’t expect much in the way of understanding from those around them re: the MMP. In fact, the only ones who might understand are men in the same position (or who recently occupied it). I don’t know about most of my readers, but I find this to be a terribly frustrating matter. On more than one occasion I have been asked why I’m not married yet. And no matter how much or well I explain it, I can see in people’s eyes that they don’t understand. I find this quite isolating at times- it creates a climate of being cut off and without aid.

Now, at this point I should mention that one of Rollo‘s little “laws” is that women are ultimately incapable of understanding the male experience. In this area I agree- the disconnect in experience and thought patterns means that women just can’t “get” what it is like to be a man. My advice is to not even try to go into detailed explanations with women when it comes to this field. You will be wasting your time.

At the same time, while understanding isn’t possible from women, and from most men too (they are too bound up in their “Blue Pill” worldview), sympathy is still possible. Even those who don’t understand why your life is the way it is can still be sympathetic. Personally speaking, I don’t find that nearly as much of a relief as understanding. But it is something, at least. So if you do find those who are sympathetic, appreciate that sympathy for what it is- the best connection you can hope to make with most people you encounter, even the good ones.

I write all of this to perhaps save some man out there the frustration that comes from trying to explain to someone what they cannot hope to understand. Accept that you will never impart that understanding, and the connection that comes with it. Take what sympathy that you can get, and keep moving forward. Such is the burden of being a man in this day and age.