Peak feminism and the single heterosexual male.

I have a few biases. One is that the Good men project is full of useful idiots. Useful, because they produce material that is so easily analyzed. Idiots, because they swallow the entire neo marxist and identity politics memeset that has led to social democracy and a regulated mixed model of capitalism.

The model that is failing. However, their most recent comment on men and feminism includes this example of the over reach of peak feminism.

Underscoring this point is the fact that there is something that calls itself a men’s rights movement, but it consists of nothing but kneejerk anti-feminism. It is made up primarily of angry, alienated men who have fully bought into the myths of hegemonic masculinity and gender roles, and not found the success and happiness that the myths implicitly promised. Since feminism is the only movement around that is attempting to dismantle those myths, they conclude that feminism is the cause of their unhappiness. If not for those meddling feminists, things would be okay. They would argue that this is a mischaracterization, but a thorough examination of their arguments reveals that this is, in fact, their sole intellectual basis. Any analysis of any issue that does not begin and end by blaming feminists, or preferably all women, is immediately discarded. Thus, lacking the social analysis tools feminists pioneered, they can accomplish nothing but surly misogyny and occasional outbreaks of violence. We spent quite some time attempting to find MRMs who could be engaged in a constructive manner, but eventually gave up. If men’s rights are to be addressed on any kind of serious level, it will have to be by feminism.

The inextricable interconnection of men’s issues and women’s issues is a complex subject. The simplest reason why feminists should get involved in masculism is this: feminism is the single largest and most politically powerful gender-oriented movement. Millions of feminists across the globe have been trained in analysis and activism by the feminist movements. Feminists have developed the verbal and conceptual vocabulary necessary to unpack and examine “how things are supposed to be” and all the ugly assumptions that go with that. Feminist theories of privilege and gender performance work just as well when applied to men’s issues. This toolset exists, and it’s the right one for the job. Facing a problem that hurts a lot of people and having the tools to solve it is, frankly, enough of a reason to do anything. In and of itself, the invaluable help it could provide is enough of a reason to say that feminism ought to support masculism. However, there are practical reasons for feminism to support it as well.

Well, no.

There are other ways to analyse the current situation. They are older, they predicted that the changes feminism bought about would be disastrous for women, children and men, and they were discounted. In short, the models of classical conservatism (what is now called paleoconservatism by some) bases its analysis on the virtues of the ancients, on duty, honour and probity.

Attached to this was the idea of complemetarianism. Men and women are different, and this difference should be encouraged. The family is the basic unit of society, not the individual. If one then has a series of moral and ethical precepts around a static, idealized state, you have Confucianism.

Better still is to add to that the virtues of charity and mercy. Couple that with the gospel, and you have Christendom. And many clerics predicted that the progressive experiment would fail.

But the consequences are that one has to live in a world where feminist analysis is now established as normal. The current state model is that male is evil. male is wrong, and male ideas are automatically suspect.

On the old blog I had a post about being a solo Dad, a professional (and academic) and Christian. I noted that in the current secular environment I am limited in whom I can date:

• Not any woman that is much younger than me.  I know women who date men 20 years younger than them, but a man doing this is shunned.
• Not any person who I may be a client (there is a zero tolerence policy on this, for good reason) or supervise, or be in a position of authority over. This functionally means all students, and most people I work with, are off limits.

It I add to that the need to not be unequally yoked… the “sampling frame” for dating is quite small.  Most of the women I respect and like are married, and it is my job to support them in their roles, not break any marriage.  But within the group where I can date, there is a high chance of being rejected.

Nuclearly rejected. As a fellow geek, Van Rooniek, notes (VR, to my knowledge, is married).

EAPs frequently DO date outside the faith, or at best marginal “believers”, while many solid Christian men sit at home weekend after weekend. And it’s not because the Christian men don’t ask — they did, and were turned down. And it’s not because they’re all fat or unemployed or whatever — some EAPs reject Christian men who are better even by worldly measures such as looks, height, and income, in favor of badboys. Other EAPs are strong enough to resist the lure of the badboy but somehow still can’t find Christian men attractive, so they don’t date at all.

Of course the EAPs come to counselling and wail about all their romantic troubles to the pastor. The pastor then responds with scathing sermons about the wicked behavior of the men, totally missing the points that:
(a) the men who caused all the trouble, seldom or never darken the door of the church;
(b) the men who are sitting in the pews being battered by the Driscollean yell-fests, DIDN’T DO IT, for the most part,
and
(c) the women are the ones who made foolish choices to date, and fornicate with, bad boys, and are in need of some serious rebuke themselves.

Simply put, they’re being savagely unfair to the good men under their pastoral care.

The trouble is that many women within the church see their role as leading, as grabbing power. SInce they have power, they want to be with someone who has even more, by their eyes.  The men she has rejected or divorced are labelled as losers or evil. But this is not as it should be… as CL notes today.

Contentment and happiness are not the same thing, for it is possible to be content in unhappy circumstances. God expects self-sacrifice and altruism from us and is more concerned with our doing right than our ‘self-actualisation’. The latter is the direct opposite of a holy life and is thus Satanic.

So at the moment, I am raising boys and am divorced: I am thus expected to be celibate. The things I miss about being married — excluding the physical and romantic — the simple companionship, caring, and support a spouse should give to each other, are the very things that require that we are self sacrificing and altruistic.

But that is not what most people want from a marriage. They are looking for self actualisation. Which as, CL points out, is not of the gospel.

It is not easy to find romance, but finding some one who can truly be a companion and support, at this time, is much, much harder.

However, the gospel will survive. The good men project will not. Neither will peak feminism.