A recent YouGov poll has revealed that very few young men feel "masculine" anymore, and that the majority of young men and women have a negative view of masculinity. The British study did show still dismal but somewhat better numbers among Americans, though. These findings demonstrate the fruits of a movement that has been underway since the beginning of time to destroy manliness, leaving the family without a head, without protection, and without guidance. As always, it is important to understand that the roles of men and women are both important in the family, and neither diminishes the other, but it is foolish and dishonest to believe that the two are interchangeable.
Even avowed liberal feminist Christina Hoff Sommers has written what is considered by most to be the definitive work dealing with the destruction of masculinity. In her book The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men, she asserts that "it became fashionable to pathologize the behavior of millions of healthy male children." She goes on to state that "Boys need (and crave) discipline, respect, and moral guidance...But being a boy is not a social disease."
To treat boys who behave like men as broken, is to systematically remove the man, and all that he is, from our society. We remove the protection, the discipline and guidance for younger men, the fighters, the providers, the builders, the strength and the stability, the stoicism, the emotional security, and the masculine comfort (the calloused hands kind). His absence is filled by a limp-wristed, flaky, self-absorbed, needs to "find himself", androgynous, thinks guns are scary weenie. What good is that man when his family is under attack, physically as well as spiritually? What good is that man when his children have real questions about life? What good is that man when you're in the trenches with him. This man is a liability to his family, his society as a whole, and to anyone who happens to be around him.
C.S. Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man that "We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst." He wrote those words 73 years ago. What would he say today?
Sommers, Christina Hoff. The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men. Simon & Schuster, 2013.
Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man, or, Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. Collier Books, 1986.