I haven’t written any articles in a while, but men’s issues strike close to my heart.
We hear a lot about female empowerment in this country and that’s a great thing. But what about men? We are told men don’t need help – they are “the patriarchy” and are just fine.
But are they?
Here is a startling look at the actual numbers from Tucker Carlson’s series Men in America (see transcript at the end of this article):
So the question to be raised is this:
Why do you never hear about this male crises? And why does there seem to be a disturbing increase in negative rhetoric in regards to describing men, almost like “there’s something wrong with masculinity”?
Today, politics has become less about what you think and more about what you are and it has a name – “identity politics”. This leads to growing extremism on both sides of the isle and is destined to divide us. Many modern day feminists take an ideological world view that sees the entire history of mankind as the oppression of women by men – “the patriarchy”, a violent world run by men at the expense of women. This is a nasty story, fundamentally predicated on resentment and it is a dreadful and pathological way of viewing the world.
Fundamentally, human history has been a cooperative enterprise and men and women have both lifted themselves out of the mire over the millennia in their cooperative endeavors. Life was extremely difficult for both women and men throughout most of human history. Throughout time, both sexes have been subject to the environment (disease/weather), early death rates and arbitrary structures of culture. The average person in the western world before 1890 lived on less than $1 per day. The life expectancy at birth in 1850 was a dismal 38.3 years. Causes of death included diseases like cholera, smallpox, and tuberculosis, as well as the general stressors of poor diet and atrociously bad medical care. Around 33% of kids born in the 1800’s died before they reached adolescence. The United States was involved in over 60 wars and major military battles between 1800 and 1900.
If you asked a modern day feminist today (the one’s who believe the oppression narrative), what the primary force that emancipated women was, many will say that it was the actions of courageous feminists that produced the social revolution that overthrow the patriarchy. This is a dreadful way of seeing the world and an ideological re-write of history.
While we know that the campaign for the vote certainly played a role in the emancipation of women, this certainly was not the primary factor. One of the primary forces in the emancipation of women was technology. For example, one factor that limited women’s freedom and role in society for hundreds of years, were the extra pressures of child rearing and the inevitability of pregnancy. Women were locked in a reproductive cycle up until the invention of birth control in 1960, which greatly liberated them and gave them control over their reproductive status. Another huge factor that helped greatly emancipate women was the invention of the sanitary napkin and toilets. The dishwasher and other labor saving devices also made a huge impact.
This is not to deny that women have experienced their share of both inequality and prejudice throughout history, because they certainly have. There are, and always will be, a minority of people – both men and women – who are bad individuals and will exploit others. But to attribute the struggles they have faced, as centuries of oppression of women by men, is absolutely abhorrent. This narrative of oppression is being taught in the humanities and much of the social sciences, at universities and increasingly in the public education system. Check out this video by Prager University, featuring Dr. Peterson, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, a clinical psychologist, a public speaker and a best-selling author:
Men are paying dire consequences for this narrative, as illustrated by the statistics in the Tucker Carlson video above. Men and young boys are growing up in a world where they are made out to be the potential manifestation of “rape culture” and told they are part of “toxic masculinity”. Their competitive drives or ambitions are regarded as part of a “tyrannical impulse”.
How are men supposed to move forward in the world with confidence (and take their place in the world), when they are being told that the heritage to which they belong is regarded as an “oppressive patriarchy” and why in the world would they shoulder this terrible burden? And this is exactly what is happening as many men feel totally demoralized and are simply stepping aside and retreating.
Perhaps we can all take a more balanced perspective:
Masculine power is not all bad, just as feminine power is not all sweetness and light. There have been countless good fathers, brothers and sons who have loved, protected, worshiped and even died for women. And even male aggression and violence, so-called “toxic masculinity”, can be used positively if channeled in the right direction, as in martial arts, for instance.
The victim/oppressor narrative is only a part of the story, which also includes great goodwill and co-creation between men and woman. The world we live in today — where women are freer than ever — is a result of both male and female sacrifice. How many millions of men died trying to protect women and children? Was it a higher or a lesser number of women who died in childbirth or were raped as spoils of war?
It’s best to acknowledge that there will always be a tension, a dynamic play — a ‘flowery battle’ to use the Taoist term — between yin and yang, energy and rest, emptiness and form, consciousness and being, activity and stillness, light and dark, formlessness and form, nature and civilization, paganism and monotheism, man and women — and all opposites that constitute our erotic and creative lives.
The postmodern attempt to flatten out gender differences will never be successful, certainly not in the biological and psychological realm. A subtle and dynamic view of gender polarities can rescue us from the boring political war of the sexes.
In the post-modern world, there is a celebration of deeper feminine archetypes, but also a great deal of chaos. We should be careful to understand that the matriarch is not only benevolent—there are female shadows just as there are male shadows. A pure matriarchy is no more desirable than a pure patriarchy and one without the other constitutes an imbalance. One just needs to observe the behavior of radical feminists who would like to rid the world of the male erection or see the dangers of female hegemony replacing ‘the man’. It is not power that we should seek, but balance.
A more enlightened feminism would focus on the strength of women rather than victimology and would help us to integrate the positive aspects of the divine feminine, with its focus on compassion, communication, community and subsistence. Furthermore, women should celebrate male virility and creativity, along with female wisdom and compassion and notice the shadows of both. Feminists need to acknowledge that an unconscious matriarchy is no more desirable than an unconscious patriarchy—that to be conscious of both poles is the beginning of wisdom.
In order to wake up from the nightmare of history, we have to make both father and mother lineages conscious. And go beyond our adolescent stage of victimology.
Transcript of Tucker Carlson video:
The incidence of suicide is vastly higher among males than females among all age groups in most of the world. 77% of worldwide suicides are committed by men. Statistics say if you are a middle-aged man, that you also probably know at least one peer who have also killed themselves. Despite these overwhelmingly disproportionate numbers, these rates are actually increasing at a dramatic rate. From 1997-2014 there was a 43% rise in suicide deaths among middle-aged America men. The rates were highest among American Indian and white men, who kill themselves at about ten times the rate of Hispanic and Black women.
The “incarceration crises” we hear so much about – over 90% of inmates are men.
The average American man will die 5 years before the average American women. Men are more than twice as likely to become alcoholics and twice as likely to die of an drug overdose.
Relative to girls, boys are failing in school. More girls than boys graduate high school, considerably more go to and graduate from college. At schools at every level, boys account for the overwhelming majority of discipline cases. One study found that 1 in 5 high school boys had been diagnosed with some sort of hyperactivity disorder, compared to 1 in 11 girls. Many are being medicated for it.
Women now decisively outnumber men in graduate school. They are the majority of doctoral degrees and are the majority of new enrollees in both law and medical schools. Between 1979-2010, working aged men with only high school degrees, saw their real hourly wages drop about 20%. Over the same period, high school educated women saw their wages rise. There are now 7 million working aged men in America who dropped out of the labor force. Nearly half of them take pain medication on any given day – the highest rate in the world by far.
Far fewer young men get married than they did just a few decades ago and fewer stay married – in fact, 1 in 5 American children now live only with their mothers. This means millions of boys growing up without fathers. Young adult men are now more likely to live with a parent than they are to live with a spouse or a partner. This is not the case with young women – single women buy their own homes at twice the rate of single men.
More women than men now have driver’s licenses.
Whenever gender differences come up in public debate, we hear about the so called “wage gap”. “A woman makes .77 for every dollar a man earns.” This number compares all American men to all American woman across all professions. No legitimate social scientist would consider that a valid or meaningful measure. The number is intentionally misleading – it’s a talking point. Once you compare men and women with similar experience, working the same hours in similar jobs for the same period of time (the only way you can measure it), the gap all but disappears. One study using census data found that single women in their 20’s living in metropolitan areas, now earn 8% more on average than their male counterparts.
The majority of managers in the workplace are woman. Woman on average are scoring higher in IQ tests.
Even physically, men are falling behind. A recent study found that almost half of young men failed the Army’s entry-level physical fitness exam during basic traiing. 70% of American men are now overweight or obese (compared to 59% of American woman).
Men seem to be becoming less male, measurability. Sperm counts across the west have plummeted – they are down nearly 60% since the 70’s. Scientists don’t know why. Testoserone levels in men have also declined. One study found that average levels of male testosterone have dropped 30% in 40-yr-old men (it has dropped 1% every year since 1987). Lower testosterone levels in men are associated with depression, lethargy, weight gain and decreased cognitive ability. Nothing like this has ever happened to a population this big, yet somehow the media has been ignoring it. You would think we would want to know why or how to fix it. It is also does not seem to be a priority in the scientific research establish. There is currently not a single NIH funded study on why testosterone levels are falling.
American men are failing in body, in mind and in spirit. This is a CRISES, yet our leaders pretend it’s not happening. In fact, they tell us the opposite is true – women are victims, men are oppressors. To question that assumption is to risk punishment. Even as women far outpace men in higher education, for example, virtually every college campus supports a women’s studies department, who’s core goal is to attack male power. Our politicians and business leaders, internalize and amplify that message – men are privileged; women are oppressed. Higher and promote accordingly. Now that would be fine it were true, but it’s not true. At best, it’s an outdated view of America that no longer exists. At worst, it a pernicious lie. Either way, ignoring the decline of men does not help anyone. Men and women need each other. One cannot exist without the other – that is elemental biology. It’s also the reality that each one of us have lived, with our parents and siblings and friends – when men fail, we all of us suffer.
