To Man Up or Stand Down

To Man Up or Stand Down


Among the many emails I get that don’t support men’s rights or don’t support my take on them, a hefty number of them are from men who take issue with the idea of other men shedding traditional masculine expectations and going their own way.

The common theme among those emails is a short lecture on what men are supposed to do; replete with sonny-lemme-tell-ya-what-it-means-to-be-a-real-man instructions.  Most of them are written with enough swagger and brio to make John Wayne sport a proud, if grossly posthumous smile.

And curiously, many of the concordant emails I get from women totally miss the point.  I just read one from a woman who lauded my work against feminism because she lamented the loss of days when a man “knew how to treat a lady.”

Apparently she thought my objection to feminism was because it kept me off a white horse.  She assumed I am engaged in a fight to protect my right to sacrifice, like a real man.  A glaring misunderstanding, but she did provide an opportune segway for the correct question.

What if a man doesn’t want to?

(pause for effect)

When all is said and done, this is the question that speaks to the heart of a growing voice, not just in the world of Men‘s Rights Activists, but in the world of men collectively.  And it is the first of many questions that are sure to form tempests of debate and ire in the coming years.

Should men break with tradition? And in that should they quit expecting themselves to be the financers and custodial protectors of women’s lives?  Should they quit paying for dates?  Should they refuse assignment to the role of breadwinner?  Are men supposed to be congenital bodyguards, socially and biologically indentured in a world where women no longer need such protection?  Indeed, we now live in a world where it is men that increasingly need protection- from women, as is clear in family courts, the workplace, universities -think Duke- and frequently their own homes.

The answers to these questions, which are, like it or not, relevant now, require some intellectual scrutiny that won’t be found in myopic edicts like “Be a real man.” In fact, I’d argue that anyone issuing such proclamations needs to take a more lucid look at the world in which they live.


And it would help to have a more cogent understanding than some of the emails I get would demonstrate.


First, I think it is critical to understand that feminism doesn't keep any man off a white horse.  Quite the contrary, feminism seeks to keep you mounted and chained to the saddle of that utilitarian stallion whether you want to be there or not.  Look, it is about time we start to understand that feminism isn't the enemy of masculinity. It is, rather, a twisted and corrupted exploitation of it.


Chivalry was a code that men lived by to protect and provide for women and children.  Feminism is an ideology that has sought, with a great deal of success to bind you to that code with no commensurate benefit.  And they use traditional masculine muscle to make sure you by God comply.


When a woman makes a false allegation of domestic abuse during a divorce, she gets an ex parte restraining order issued, without proof, and takes your property, children, assets and income without due process or just cause.  It isn't Jessica Valenti and her sisters that she sends after you.  It is gun toting state functionaries from an almost exclusively male justice system, represented by male cops that will take you to a jail with male keepers.


When your woman becomes violent, the police will mostly likely come and arrest you.  They do this under the auspices of primary aggressor laws, which I will cover at another time.  But suffice it to say for now that those laws quite simply translate into "arrest the man no matter what the circumstances."


And these guys slapping the cuffs on you will feel righteous and heroic for what they are doing.  It is not because they are feminist, and this is most crucial to understand, but because they are being chivalrous; because they know how to treat a lady.


They are nothing more than useful idiots, genetically programmed puppets.  It is the modern paradigm of chivalry on crack, and the men doing these things don't see themselves as anything less than good men playing the role that good men are supposed to play.

Women don’t have roles any more, except as they choose to take them on. Even then, they can change their role at will, depending on whether they are vying for a promotion or sitting with a man in a restaurant when the dinner check arrives; depending on whether they are playing the empowered unstoppable woman, or the pitiful, helpless victim that needs the state to destroy your life so she will feel safe, and so that she will feel solvent. Despite all its disingenuous claims, feminism and self sufficiency do not live under the same roof.  Feminism is simply a distortion of human biology that uses femininity to plunder the lives of men without having to compete with them fairly or reciprocate for what they take.

It's Carte blanche opportunism that leeches off the mandate of men to act with honor.

It is the new, but no longer sparklingly new social doctrine of equality-plus. When we were kids we used to call it getting the bigger half of the candy bar, except they want the whole thing, save for barely enough to keep men laboring and providing more candy bars.  



This isn’t to cast men as victims of women. As I have tried to make it clear, all this is enabled, lock, stock and barrel, by men rigidly maintaining their traditional roles, giving women whatever they ask for by rote.

In fact, were it not for men engaging in this mindless form of collective patricide, feminism would have been deservedly quashed at least thirty years ago.  Real men would not have tolerated all this nonsense for a minute.

The catch-22 of this affair, however, is glaringly obvious.  The traditional mindset, previously more tempered by reason, has served as the foundation of stable families and adjusted children for countless generations.  It is indeed an area where expressions like the fabric of our society and backbone of our civilization are not just tired and overused metaphors, but spot on descriptions of reality.

That, in and of itself, might appear to be a sound reason for men to just shut up, shovel and sacrifice; to labor for what has worked in the past as though the last 40 years never happened.  But that is the problem. The last 40 years actually did happen.  That toothpaste is already out of the tube, and trying to squeeze it back in is a noble and pathetically stupid waste of time.

It is not that traditional roles can’t work.  They can for a waning few; those willing to find their way to each other though the modern morass of traditions in a world that has been stripped of them.  But it is a gamble with Las Vegas odds and therefore should be a choice, I honor men who have managed to make traditional relationships work, but I don't infer on them a license to point and me and say I have to do it, too.

And until enough men start to imagine a world in which they can choose what they want to be, rather than having others choose it for them, we will continue to see misandry and feminism stab them in the back, with more than likely their male brothers holding the knife.


The way out of this is simple and clear.


When enough men find themselves paying for dinner woman who earn more than them, and can use the government to come after even more, there will likely be a lot more men, at the very least, saying:

“Hey, wait a minute.”

It seems such a small thing, but in the realm of a new direction for men, it would be one giant step in the right direction.