Egalitarian Nonsense Meets the Real World

In our egalitarian world, we like to think men and women are exact replicas of each other, performing the same functions equally well. This is patently not true but is a lie we have been fed from childhood in our schools and popular culture. Girls can do anything boys can do!

And so we get to the stage where we have a police force that has frontline women officers. What happens when things get rough? This. A male policeman is overpowered and pushed to the ground by a violent young man. What does his female partner do? Does she get stuck in and help out? No. Instead she ‘could be heard repeatedly yelling “stop it” to the man attacking her colleague.’ Who could blame a woman for this reaction when faced with such an aggressive and strong man? We don’t expect our women to have to stand up to this sort of thing. But imagine if that police officer’s partner had been a 6 ft male. We might have seen a slightly different ending to that video.

Now I know, I’ve heard the argument before that women officers are helpful in a domestic violence situation. Fine. Maybe that’s true. But in frontline work, we’d be better off with men – and big strong ones at that. Men that crims are going to think twice before taking on.

Dating Advice #1

My wife recently shared with me this article written by a Jana Hocking, who laments the lack of good men. What she doesn’t get about men becomes swiftly apparent. So I decided, being the good bloke I am, to help out with a bit of dating advice. Let me begin by making a general observation about the different standards we hold for men and women. It’s often assumed that women can and should be picky about men, but when men have the temerity to be picky about women, whiny cries of “Where are all the good men?” are heard. If a woman can’t find a man, the fault is automatically seen to be men. While this might be true, there also might be more to this. Complaining that you are single and then expecting men to take you on is backwards. If you want a man, you probably need to think carefully about what men are looking for. So what are men looking for?

Sex. Yes well there is obviously that. Men are attracted to youth and beauty. That is why women will find it easier to get dates in their 20s than they will in their thirties where the dates are likely to start drying up. And unfortunately in our current environment, the sexual revolution has done women no favours in this regard. In the old days, women held real power. If a man wanted sex, he would generally have to marry a girl. Thus marriage occurred at an earlier age. Now, the tables are turned. Women, in the name of liberation, have given the very power they held over men away for nothing in return. Men don’t need to make any commitments for sex. The ‘price’ of sex has never been lower for men. And that, unfortunately, affects every single woman – even the chaste ones.

Jana writes about her friend group. “I might be biased, but seriously, they are all gorgeous, outgoing, have awesome jobs and are hilariously fun. Yet, here we are in our 30s, still chatting about the various dates we’d been on and pondering about blokes taking forever to text us back.”

Now men, are not (honestly!) all one-dimensional. Sex is clearly important to men, but for many (most) men, there is also a desire for a long-term partner. What we are looking for here is someone who complements us. And this is where Jana goes wrong. She quotes Dr Kate Adams, a TV vet;  “I have found that successful women generally aren’t seen as appealing for guys, particularly when the opposite tends to be true when women view a potential partner.” What a wonderful discovery. Men and women look for different things in a partner. Jana later tells of her experience that most men aren’t interested in her career ambitions and goals. She writes of men who have “really championed my cause” in the realm of career, but questions, “where are they in the dating world?“

Here’s the thing. A lot of men aren’t interested in your career. They are looking for a romantic partner who will complete them and offer what they do not have. If they are a strong candidate – i.e., they have a successful career themselves, they are most likely looking for what they do not have, that is, someone who can make a home and children. We are not interested in your careers if we are interested in a romantic relationship with you. If we care about your career, we are treating you more as a mate or colleague and less as a romantic possibility.

Men are driven by their design to provide and protect. They need someone to provide for and protect. We want a woman – in all her glorious differences. We want someone who will build a glorious haven and have children with us. We do not want someone aspiring to be a man. And that’s how a career woman comes across to many of us. Now you can call us backward if you like. You can tell us we need to get with the modern age. But many of us have found great wives who do complement us. And as the Proverb says, she is worth far more than rubies. Maybe we don’t need to change, maybe you do.

So you have a choice – you can either meet the market, or you can whine about it. There are two distinct markets that Jana will need to think about. First, there are guys out looking for a cheap score. These are the guys just looking for no-commitment sex. Then there are men who are looking for sex yes, but also want to find a woman to complement them. Let’s face it, neither of these markets are particularly interested in a woman’s career, but one is more likely to be interested in and value a woman more than the other. Jana seems to be opting to market herself to the men in the first market. She is marketing herself on sex appeal. We have a picture of her in sexy lingerie that she has shared on Instagram. That ticks box one. But as she ages, she will have less and less value to men in that area. What will she compensate with?

The Worst of Both Sexes in Our Politics

It appears to me that our politics now reflects the worst of both sexes, not the best: the violent passions and ambitions of unscrupulous men and the shrillness and manipulative emotion-mongering of meddlesome women.

Anthony Esolen from Out of the Ashes

An Invitation to Your Mission

One of the issues I have thought through a lot in recent years is the place of a man in the church and the kingdom. Too often, for lots of men, the church seems ‘ho-hum’ and irrelevant. One of the reasons for this is that the role of men in the world is often denigrated. I’ve heard too many sermons that suggest serving Christ could mean dropping more of your vocational work to help in institutional church ministry. Other sermons critique wealth and suggest saving is not trusting God despite God calling men to provide for their families. I’ve seen videos of men at church valuing their role as a doctor only because it means they can fund ‘ministry’ in other parts of the world. Often sermons use examples of people in ‘full time Christian ministry’ (a phrase I find frustrating) as positive examples of Christian sacrifice. Rarely, if ever, are the laity and their ordinary lives looked upon as examples of godliness in Christ’s kingdom.

The problem with all of this is that it ignores core truths about masculinity in Scripture. While I am aware of some of the key issues with Wild at Heart by John Eldredge, there is a certain amount of truth in his diagnosis. One of his core arguments is that men are made for adventure and battles and a beauty. I might not put it in exactly those terms, but I do think Scripture teaches us that Adam was made for dominion. He was to go out into God’s earth and take dominion. He was designed to image God as he took what God had made and in an analogous way to God, fill up emptiness and give it shape.

Here’s how Eldridge puts it. Most men think they are simply here on earth to kill time – and it’s killing them. But the truth is precisely the opposite. The secret longing of your heart, whether it’s to build a boat and sail it, to write a symphony and play it, to plant a field and care for it – those are the things you were made to do. That’s what you’re here for. We are designed for dominion, and in Christ we are called to work to extend Christ’s lordship to the areas of his world that we touch. But too often we feel denigrated and tarred as ‘worldly’ for wanting to do these things. What we need to hear is the call that Christ lays upon every man to get out there and subdue his sphere of influence for Christ. This is the way you as a man are Christ’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works. We need to be encouraged to wage war in this world – not with worldly weapons, but to take every thought captive as we seek to demolish the strongholds of Christ’s enemies in the arenas we have been called. That’s a lot more encouraging than to hear that most of our lives are irrelevant except for the times we are at church helping out.

Feminism Hurts Women

It is no accident that feminists have succeeded in getting women treated “equally” with men, and now that women are no longer singled out for honor, the men around them just go with their lusts. The results have not been at all favorable for women. After decades of established feminism, the end result is that far more women, in their relationships with men, are treated like dirt.

Future Men p136 – Douglas Wilson