The Crisis of Manhood, and Why Women Should Not Suffer It, Or Suffer For It

[ancianita]

Stephanie Ruhle brought up the issue of defining 'manhood' on Thursday night in her discussion about the problems behind the overturning Roe v Wade.

How that crisis has shown itself has been studied.



In the late 70's, my old Washington, DC therapist told me that there are two kinds of people -- those who have problems and know it, and those who have problems and don't know it; how it's the latter who create most of the problems for the former.

Girls and women have their problems and know it; boys and men have their problems and don't know it.

Men have legalized and "traditionalized" anything that seems to normalize the problem of their sexual drives. That’s why they do not care if women get to vote, drive, own property, play sports, have STEM careers, work in Silicon Valley, obtain public office or shape national governance. Getting what men have, and preventing men from taking that away is women's problem.

From churches to marriage to property laws to social behavior to dress codes to drinking norms, men have treated women — elegantly, nicely, contemptuously, legally — as secret, controlled, personal sex repositories to OWN.

Men. You need to figure something out beyond keeping women's bodies captive under "traditional" institutional cover in order to get relief for your sex drives. Men can’t keep killing us off for having free will and minds of our own, for not being at their beck and call to fuck and do child rearing "for the good of all," which translates into "for men."

Men. You need to grow up. See your mothers as adults, as women.
Be REAL men. Not fake men who think blowing out another’s light makes theirs brighter.

Take responsibility for grooming boys as men who don't just tolerate the "mere" equality of girls and women, but respect the equality of their female friends, their family girls and women -- and women.

Stop hiding behind "tradition," "religion," "law" in order to keep your bodily needs the secret drive behind yours or other boys’ or men’s domination efforts in all public arenas, night OR day.
Stop naming girls and women.
Stop judging what they "deserve."
Stop projecting.
Stop denying and deflecting.
Stop making your personal problems girls' and women's problems.
Stop equating admiring with desiring.
Stop equating the sensual with the sexual.
Stop equating affection with foreplay.
Stop bullying, gaslighting, or hearing yes when she said no.
Stop proclaiming "rule of law" if you won't rule yourselves.

Stop letting yourself be groomed to be a Rape Dad.


Do be about what the best of men do best -- think, engineer, create, build, protect, trial-and-error brute force.
But don't make your achievements contingent on girls' and women's submission.

Everywhere on Earth, children assume they have no choice. Legally, socially, economically, religiously. Because they don't. Children's minds, behavior and free wills are trained all over the Earth. Which is why they are so easy to lead even in adulthood. Some childhood trainings never die.

I've never seen a minor child make a choice to be trained into religious life. I have, however, seen many of them, once feeling independent of their families, opt out of their religious training. But only where there are safe, visible choices about how one might live one's life.

No adult can convince me that a child, boy or girl, who sees women covered all around her/him, including her/his mother, is not subtlely groomed to make her/his "free choice." Any child exposed to food, language, dress, deference to boys and men, silent obedience from girls and women, religion as law, is conditioned -- called grooming -- into the free choice to be that way. It's self reinforcing, isn't it.

Females born into male devised systems would rather just go along to get along. That's how they're raised. They're also raised to defend their tribe. To defend hierarchies. Who isn't?

Under these current male dominated systems, it takes relearning, every damn generation, that there is no deference among equals. Equals take turns. Every damn generation. This relearning should stop with the current generation. It appears that in many ways, they intend to stop inequality through hierarchy and domination.

Everyone here knows deep down what the sexist threat of violence is really about -- submit or die.

The drive to free will is a genetic inheritance.

If men don't accept equality, then it will be evolutionary law -- that adaptation trumps domination in evolutionary history -- that determines that women will not end up being merely deferential in male devised systems.

Girls and women might be down but in evolutionary terms, they're not out.

Girls and women have their problems and know it; boys and men have their problems and don't know it.

[Pachamama]

1. Stephanie Ruhles interview with Terry Crews was fantastic and insightful too

I really was impressed and it was an implant message about toxic masculinity and how women are treated and what need to learn to do.

What you just posted above is very insightful and I want to read this and really hope there are more conversations about this because I think at this connects with the whole fascist authoritarian and abortion rights issues and what is happening in our country and even explaining Putin and his Army.

[Wounded Bear]

2. I saw most of that. Great stuff...nt

[Pachamama]

5. I always have liked Terry Crews acting and comedy and didn't know much about him

He has done a lot of work on himself and became a better human and also in his understanding the sources of the male toxicity and what being a man should be.

[ancianita]

3. It was! Which got me to reviewing what I've studied about it over the years.

What you just posted is also insightful

I think at this connects with the whole fascist authoritarian and abortion rights issues and what is happening in our country and even explaining Putin and his Army.

and in the larger contexts of society and geopolitics, is SPOT ON.

THANK YOU!

[smirkymonkey]

4. K&R

[Wicked Blue]

6. If only there was a simple pill to block whatever male hormone might cause this nt

[ancianita]

7. I hear you. Still, a pill wouldn't lead to men's giving up the benefits of hierarchy and

HIStory and "tradition" and though. Moreover it would still take the will of millions, which, as we've seen with the deadly virus, COVID, would still have millions opting out.

This men's problem, and not as much a chemical problem as a denied problem.

They can't deny, wish it away or simply hope a pill will change the world views and mental/emotional habits they don't want to work on.

[Irish_Dem]

8. We live on a planet where men raping, stalking, murdering women is considered normal.

And being subjugated, discriminated against, controlled is also the norm.

[ancianita]

9. Yes. They deny their war against the female half of the planet as a deflection from their crisis

and pretend "everything's normal," project their problems onto the female half as the females' problem. They use the lack of consequences for their "manhood" behavior to justify continuing it as normal. That "cultural" mutilation and honor death practices are normal, that the war crime of rape is normal, that forcing their will on women and girls is normal.

Females have to remove themselves from males' problems, from the illegitmate suffering men cause them, and from suffering men in crisis at all. When half the planet causes problems for the other half, the problem makers have no right to demand the other half who didn't create the problems "help" them solve those problems -- "help me to help you." No.

Males and females can work with each other, but in the end, it's men's decision to redefine manhood and live by it. Females will know the ones who do that; we all know men by the millions do that. But enough don't, such that the world is learning who really have the problems and don't know it. Or choose not to know it. They take their illegitimate crisis out on the rest of us and illegitimately call it normal.

Thanks for your post.

[Irish_Dem]

10. YW. Yes women are always aware of safety issues for themselves and kids.

It is a dangerous world, and it is mostly males who pose the threat.

I wonder if/when this planet will be safe for women and children.

[scarletlib]

11. Awesome.