Young men especially need a culture that can help them define worthy aspirations. Adults don’t emerge. They’re made....,Child-Man in the Promised Land, Kay Hymowitz, City Journal, Spring 2008
When first reading this, it seemed that the author was describing young men in a blaxploitation movie set in Harlem in 1973. Directionless, overgrown teenagers, abandoned by society, seeking out pleasures, licit and illicit, utterly uninterested in the larger consequences of sexual relationships, high on one thing or another -- this was the foundation of a new hooliganism, sometimes called the Quiet Riot.
But, wait, this long and windy complaint is a general description of single young men in 2008. It's no longer Them (dark, foreboding, handsome, good at basketball); it's all single young men. While young women have become the New Woman, young men have become idle, video game freaks who just want some trim before breakfast.
Single women in their twenties and early thirties are joining an international New Girl Order, hyperachieving in both school and an increasingly female-friendly workplace, while packing leisure hours with shopping, traveling, and dining with friends...(Child-Man in the Promised Land, cont'd)
Of course, Hymowitz fails to point out that it's illegal for there to be a New Boy Order, you know, where guys work together toward helping one another, where they're regarded as a disadvantaged class in school and therefore given vastly more assistance than so-called "advantaged" students. When was the last time you heard about a public education campaign to assist the huge number of male students at the tipping point of dropping out of school? When was the last college campaign you heard about to help male students over the hump of required courses in areas where many may have problems?
And on the job, the writer's own experience suggests that the virtues of the New Girl (aggressive, assertive, hard-charging, and in control) are denied to the New Boy. The motivation to succeed has been undercut by a new privileged class and the order's enforcers in upper management.
Fact is, the game now is not a transformation of the old game, where boys were somewhat advantaged (except for little matters like required military service). The new game simply inverts the old. At least in the old days the girls had marriage and motherhood to look forward to. Funny thing -- some of these brilliant columnists should read a serious anthropologist like Robin Fox -- men unmotivated by the prospect of being a part of family and society tend to turn into video game freaks, drunks, and losers. It is also worth noting that, for thirty years, the propaganda from all points of the compass has been that men are dangerous, destructive, over-aggressive tyrants. After a while, the target of constant propaganda may begin to believe the lies and start saying "yeah, that's what I'm really like."
There is also some doubt in this writer's mind about the superiority of a New Girl culture of shopping, travel and dining. When that culture is upheld by the necessity to wage war for resources, this writer knows who pays. It ain't the New Girl driving the Escalade.
Luther
1 comment:
I've found several pages commenting regarding Kay Hymowitz's comments on Immature Men.
Hymowitz is typical of feminism double-speak and its new of male-bashing.
Place the article she wrote about Men next to the article she wrote about "The New Girl Order," (you'll have to Google it, but it comes up quickly).
For a movement that never stopped crowing for years about double standards, many of these feminists sure as hell create their own. These two articles are typical of feminism. On one hand, she savages all young men for not lining up to be pawned and played by young women in whatever fashion and form these young women might desire.
On the other side of the coin, globe-hopping and endless shopping trips are celebrated as being almost spiritual experiences for the single young female, and young women are completely allowed to forego marriage in their youth for pursuit of the lifestyles they choose.
Young, focused males with futures are waking up to the hypocrisies and absurdities of feminism. Its getting worse as time goes on. Assumptions of male violence are pushed to the extreme by legislation such as VAWA, which is blatantly unconstitutional merely in its title--Violence Against Women Act. Studies show dv is a 60% male, 40% female phenomena, but under feminism, there are NO instances of female violence against men. Why? Well, obviously they're just suffering from Battered Woman's syndrome and righteously lashing out against a man that oppresses them! There's always an excuse offered for female behavior by feminism.
Likewise, never bring up an enlightened debate about abortion. First thing you'll hear is some talk about rape. Almost guaranteed. And the response is, "How about the other 93+ percent of abortions that AREN'T due to rape or incest, but rather have causes that arose out of CONSENSUAL sex chosen by the female?" And if you do this, you'll immediately be branded a right-wing religious nut, instead of a concerned father/brother/son commenting upon how feminists seem to have lost the deeper plot regarding human sexuality and have taken abortion to the level of a right-of passage into female expression of individual rights. Imagine if a drunk driver tried to use this type of defense in a court of law for his/her antisocial behavior... Abortion is a destructive and anti-social act, regardless of getting into soft issues of morality and religion. Yet for feminism, this double entendre is normal and accepted.
Basically, feminism, the virulent breed we're seeing at work the past 20-odd years, found out women's "equality" doesn't come about through simple egalitarianism. Its a sneaky trick tied closely with communist-styled rhetoric. See, if men and women were actually admitted to have differences based upon gender (which is only self-evident), then there would be room to interpret different outcomes based upon gender differences. BUT, and this is critical, if men and women are assumed to be "Equal" in all ways, and then feminists can point out or frame instances where women are not the pure equal of men, then they can say because their is no "equality of outcome" between the sexes, it is only obvious there is some insidious force repressing women (the de facto evil force is the "Patriarchy"), and therefore women are victims, and entitled to social compensation.
The net effect of this garbage is simple--feminism's main problem is its power nowadays comes mainly from anti-social pillars. Feminism pays lip service to mothers, yet millions of feminists march for the rights to abort, not for the rights of women who accomplish a social good by bringing new children into the world. They'll obscure this fact with overcrowding arguments and everything else, and they lose the main plot. We are all mortal, and for our societies to continue as they are, we must replace ourselves through procreation. Feminists pay lip service to relationships and family, yet openly support divorce on demand and VAWA legislation, which are both fronts to break up relationships, not help strengthen them and help them evolve.
Authors like Hymowitz forget themselves--when they lambast young males for going out on the town and hooking up for non-relationship sex from bars and parties...who does Hymowitz think the other consensual party might be? Yup, guess what? Its young women deciding to consensually engage in such behaviors! For young women, its their "Sex and the City" phase. For young men, they are being immature and non-committal.
Ultimately, feminism is about the never-ending quest for power based upon gender. Most of the true egalitarian aims of the early second wave have been accomplished in terms of marketplace and economics. Pay Equality arguments, when deconstructed, show the pay gap is statistically non-existent UNTIL you start attaching social value to a woman brining new life into the world. MOTHERS with young children are the ones who need a new paradigm, THEY are the ones who deserve social support for their prosocial contributions based upon sexuality and gender, as they struggle not just to compete against men in the workplace, but also single young FEMALES. The value of female sexualtiy realized in having children is what we have lost. That, and the breakdown of marriage in the West and single motherhood has led to significant declines in quality of life for lower-class women (see Marriage and Caste by Hymowitz). Sadly, that proved to be the real area of progressive reform feminism should have been strong enough to tackle. Hymowitz is an intellectual parasite, content to write pseudo-intellectual babble about the plight of women to write her own paycheck to cash for a couple of bags from Macy's, not contributing anything of social value to the search for a new sustainable paradigm.
But she sure celebrates the shopping trips, pretty-colored cel phones, and the carefree lifestyle of single young females calling all their own shots. And that's fine, until she exposes her hypocrisy by lambasting young men for behaving in similar fashion.
This is not an enlightened woman. Unfortunately, she is typical of feminist writers. It is a great credit that most women discount feminism as a force relevant to their lives. Perhaps this is why feminism has become more and more virulent and insidious in its attacks upon men. But that said, let's not ever forget the power of this movement over the last 40 years to make deep and inalterable changes in the nature of our Western societies.
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