An End To Men?

I read this article during lunch today and cringed.

I drew back not because of the content within and my own personal reaction to it but more because I already began hearing in my mind the responses from many Christian communities and mentors that I've had in my life. I make no effort to hide that my great struggle these past 3 or 4 years has been to distance myself personally, emotionally and spiritually from those who brought me up. I've been becoming my own man.

And that process felt like hell. I struggled with feelings of rejection, abandonment, apostasy and all of that preceded actual conversation with them.

But that's just background. Regarding the article at hand, I instinctively found their arguments ready and waiting. The headship of men, the created order, the fallen world, radical feminism, homosexuality (although that wasn't even mentioned in the article), the snide jokes and character attacks. Familiar with these tactics from years of watching and even my own time employing them, I found these responses in my mind.

That is not my response.

If women are doing well professionally, good for them. If they're receiving more recognition and the world realizes how amazing and precious a daughter is, how prized and adored she should be, good. And if men are losing their jobs because manufacturing and other old industries are drying up, then they can shrivel up and die. They get no sympathy. This is my response. I feel neutral to the fact that women have overtaken men in so many fields. I'm not cheering for "Team Testosterone." I think that's the dumbest shit in the world, dividing humanity into two opposing groups and pitting them in a zero sum game where there's one winner and one loser. I believe humanity has reaped an enormous benefit from the prosperity and advancement of women. I believe that their rise, in light of their relative biological disadvantages in terms of physical strength and childbearing, is great news for humanity. Less reliant on the worker prized for his muscle and more dependent on those who work with their mind, humanity has taken another step forward. Women have demonstrated an equal capacity for mental work as men have and a substantial argument exists for the superiority of the female brain in many areas.

Men have more competition now than ever in almost everything. Good. Competition should weed out the weak. The unambitious, the undisciplined, untalented, unthinking, unresourceful will sink to the bottom. Good. That puts me at greater risk than ever before. Excellent news, because now I have more incentive than ever to grow myself. From the Homeric epics where women were interchangable with horses in being chattel slaves and spoils of war, tools of pleasure and procreation, things to carry off in a raid to this article, humanity has come a long way. Consider this, I don't need to be a very good man to be worthy of a chattel slave. I just need to be strong enough to knock her unconscious and carry her away with me. What kind of man would be an appropriate companion to an intelligent, ambitious, articulate, creative, thoughtful and discerning woman? Would the rapist pirate brute be her equal? Absolutely not. Because the market has now been flooded with amazing women, men must now bring more to buy love. The currency is your own soul and in my estimation, the vast majority of men are poor as dirt without two pennies to rub together. If humanity were indeed divided into two hormonal teams, I would be so damn disappointed with this sad sack of Bad News Bears and demand a trade, retire or fake an injury.

But then again, perhaps my views are skewed. Perhaps there are men out there who have interests beyond watching sports, eating and video games. Perhaps I just hate Flushing, New York and the kind of men it's produced in general because as I'm writing this, I keep thinking about quiet, passive men or men consumed by consumerism. Perhaps, I've just been incredibly bitter about spending years of my life trying to fit in just such a community. In my mind, like fireflies in a forest far away, memories of better men flicker through but I can't be sure if that's my hallucination, my wishes telling my eyes what to see. If you haven't guessed by now, I despise life without initiative and ambition.

More people than any point in the history of humanity are living with initiative and ambition. In the past few centuries, women have been taking steps to live more fully. Small steps at first until now they're taking giant strides. Despite how frustrated and angry I may write sometimes, I actually live most of my life smiling. I can only do so because so many women now live fully and I've been reaping the rewards of them doing so. I'm thankful.