NB* Please read the comment section at the end of the post before you swear off my blog forever as a load of misogynistic crap. There are some excellent points brought up, as well as an apology or two and some clarifications. As I say in the post, I\u2019m fumbling through this argument.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
Sometimes I wonder what you think of my blog. I wonder if you wonder if I\u2019m completely honest all the time, or if I exaggerate, or if I\u2019m afraid to talk about certain things. I wonder if you notice that I\u2019ve mentioned things and never followed up on them, that I prefer to make you laugh than make you think, that I self-edit for the sake of those I love, those that love me, and those that would be hurt by re-living certain times in my past.<\/p>\n
Because I wonder all these things too. I know I exaggerate sometimes; that\u2019s part of my personality. My best friend knows to subtract 40% of the drama of what I say to arrive at the truth of the matter, but it doesn\u2019t bother her (it doesn\u2019t, right, Meg?). It\u2019s a personality quirk, one I\u2019ve had forever<\/i>. (See what I mean?)<\/p>\n
I know I\u2019ve brought up things about my past that I would like to follow up on. I\u2019d like to tell you what it was like to be a drug addict, what it was like to find God in my own personal hell, what it was like to carry a child inside me and know that the entire world was betting against me. I\u2019d like to tell you what I feel now, when I look at her face and know that I\u2019ve beaten the odds, that I was strong enough to accept the grace that was offered to me. But I can\u2019t tell you those stories just now. For me, that life seems light years away. That girl seems like another person, one I sometimes don\u2019t remember very clearly. But for my family it wasn\u2019t so long ago. It was just yesterday when they paced the floors at night, wondering where I was and if I was alive or dead. It was just yesterday when my mother and father spent hours upon hours praying for me, begging God to get me out of the hole I had dug for myself. And I can\u2019t put them through that again. Not now. One day I will tell you those stories, because they are stories that need to be told. Other girls need to know that they can make it, even when they have no idea how or where to begin. Other mothers and fathers need to know that their children are not lost, that their children can be saved. Other young men need to know that they can be strong enough for two; that they can make a family out of two broken people.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not time for that, yet. There are other things I want to talk about, and sometimes, like today, I wonder if I should. I wonder it if it\u2019s too uncharacteristic of me, too harsh, too real. Too gritty. I wonder if I have the authority to speak on these matters, if I really know what I\u2019m saying or if I just think I do. I wonder if my words will hurt someone. Because those things I mention above, those things that make me prone to exaggeration or reluctant to discuss things that might hurt those I love, those are qualities that aren\u2019t just personality traits unique to me. Those are part of my inheritance as a woman. We are emotional creatures. We are attuned to the emotional well-being of those around us. I like to make you happy by making you laugh. My mind doesn\u2019t run to high ideals or first principles. I focus on the simple stuff, the stuff that makes up my daily life, because most of you reading this are women, and those are the things that you are concerned with.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019m going to talk about something else anyway, and I hope you\u2019ll bear with me, and know that I\u2019m fumbling through a complex subject as best I can.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, the Anchoress<\/a> brought a horrible story to our attention<\/a>. \u00a0A story about male rape victims in Uganda and other places, where rape is used as a weapon of war. A story about the stigma these men face, how they can\u2019t get medical help, how they almost always lose their wives if they tell them, and their children. How their community no longer views them as men.<\/p>\n I see a parallel in this story, and I hope to draw it without diminishing in any way<\/i> the unbearable suffering that these men are facing.<\/p>\n Our culture, here in America, has figuratively raped our men. We have taken their power, their masculinity, their honor, and the respect they deserve. We make sitcoms where they are pictured as bumbling, idiotic placeholders who need to be taught a lesson by their smart-mouthed wives. The jobs that have traditionally been allotted to men for the protection of us, their women, have now been opened up to both sexes, to the detriment of all involved. Men are no longer allowed to protect us, because we, in our ignorance and in our crippling pride, don\u2019t want to be protected. We women wanted to show the world that we were not less than men, and in doing so, instead of making ourselves better, we cut them down to prove our superiority.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not one to call for a return to the days of the angel of the hearth. I think women should have the right to vote, and own property, and drive, and work. I think that women should be equal under the law. But as a culture, we have said, \u201cWomen are better. Men are senseless, idiotic brutes who have had the power all this time because of strength and convention, not because of some innate nature that desires to lead and protect.\u201d<\/p>\n We have raped our men and brought them to their knees. Do not imagine that I am exaggerating this. Look around our country, and you will see men crying out in pain for all that we have taken from them. They are no longer allowed to be what they were born to be. They are no longer allowed to do what they were born to do \u2014 to protect us. To guide us.<\/p>\n I know there are those of you who cry foul, who say, \u201cwe don\u2019t need protection! We don\u2019t need guidance! We can figure things out just as well as the men.\u201d<\/p>\n To you I say that you are wrong. Men and women are of equal value, assuredly, but we differ in essence. Women\u2019s minds are ruled by emotions, by which we protect our families and our children. Every woman is called to motherhood, whether actual or spiritual. It is what we were made for. Our minds turn inward, to the stuff of life, and this is as it should be.<\/p>\n Men are different. They see things in the long-term. They worry about how best to make a place in the world for their family, not how best to order the family itself. (Forgive me for not including single men here, but I honestly don\u2019t know enough about the life of the single man to make assumptions. The comment box is down there, though, boys!) Their minds are free of emotional restraints, the better to allow them to ponder the stuff of eternity. There\u2019s a reason why Socrates was a man, why Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine, Joyce, Eliot, and Shakespeare were men. The \u201cdead white male,\u201d that most despised creature in modern academia, is an archetype precisely because they were the ones who thought in leaps and bounds. They were the geniuses who laid the foundation of our modern society. The occasional Jane Austens were the exception, not the rule.<\/p>\n The Ogre and I attended a conference once in Tulsa. The conference was on interdisciplinary studies, which we should have known was code for \u201ctolerance, tolerance, tolerance and diversity or death!\u201d But we were so naive, freshly out of grad school at our wonderful little University where the canon of Western Tradition was properly venerated. Where men were treated with respect, as were women. Where the idea of \u201cwomen\u2019s studies\u201d had no place, because to study women is to study men, and all of humanity.<\/p>\n We entered into the dragon\u2019s lair without realizing it. The Ogre gave his presentation, on the cry of Kurtz at the end of the Heart of Darkness, <\/i>and we attended a few other mediocre presentations before the conference dinner.<\/p>\n It was after an underwhelming course of mystery meat and limp salad that the woman who was putting on the conference, the former Women\u2019s Studies chair and present director of Interdisciplinary Studies, began talking about the same thing everyone always talks about at these sorts of things. \u201cWhat is Interdisciplinary Studies?,\u201d she began. \u201cWhat are we doing here?\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n The Ogre and I were beginning to wonder the same thing as she rambled about diversity and recognizing the value of postcolonial literature and the cry of oppressed peoples. Then she got to the crux of her argument. \u201cWe\u2019re looking for truth here, people.\u201d she said. \u201cNot white male, capital-T truth, of course,\u201d she went on, her voice dripping with disdain. A titter ran through the crowd of graduate students at such an antiquated and hideous notion. The girl sitting next to me at the table cast a doubtful glance at the Ogre, as if he were exactly what they were not<\/i> looking for here. The boy on the other side of him perceptively moved his chair further from the Ogre\u2019s. \u201cNo,\u201d the speaker went on, \u201cwe\u2019re looking for each person\u2019s truth. The ever-changing, individual truth, as we make it.\u201d<\/p>\n I don\u2019t have to tell you what a load of crap it all was. Nor do I really need to tell you that, in fact, the Ogre is the embodiment of white male, capital-T truth. He is everything our modern society despises. A white male Catholic! What could be more despicable than that?<\/p>\n I also don\u2019t have to tell you what it\u2019s like watching him fight these battles, but I will. It\u2019s like watching Sisyphus roll his rock uphill only to have someone, a girl in his class, a feminist teacher, an anti-Catholic colleague, kick it out of his hands. He trudges back wearily to begin again, knowing that the battle will never be won, knowing that the world will always kick him when he\u2019s down. Knowing that the only people who truly support him are those who truly see what\u2019s happening around us, and knowing that those people are few and far between. Knowing that he is hated for what he is, a man who refuses to be less than that, just as surely as women once used to be despised and devalued for what they were.<\/p>\n I used to fume at the arguments I\u2019m making here. I used to see them as nothing more than a tool to oppress women. But they\u2019re not. I can see now, having lived with and loved a man among men, having given birth to my own little boy, that men and women are essentially different. We can never be equals, because we are not equal. We are so very, very different.<\/p>\n Why can\u2019t we embrace it? Why can\u2019t we rejoice in our difference? Sure, sometimes I get mad that the Ogre gets to walk out the door every day, or for six months, while I\u2019m stuck with the kids. But really, I wouldn\u2019t trade it. I would go crazy not seeing my children. I miss them after two hours away. He misses us acutely, but it isn\u2019t the same. The children are my life, they are the air I breathe. It\u2019s not the same for him. We are the end to all his work, it\u2019s true; he is motivated by a desire to care for us. But the work he does is worth doing in and of itself. He has a separate work to do outside the family, and it\u2019s one I couldn\u2019t do. My mind doesn\u2019t run to philosophy and poetry the way his does. I love poetry because I feel it; he loves poetry because he understands it.<\/p>\n Being unequal does not make us less than. It\u2019s time that we recognized our men for the leaders and protectors that they could be, if we would only let them. Feminists, lay down your arms! Let the men be men again. They are no threat to you. They are, in fact, the very thing our country needs to get back on its feet. They are what we need to bring back the family in our society of crumbling morals.<\/p>\n Men, don\u2019t be afraid to be strong! Even if the women around you don\u2019t want you to be, rest assured that somewhere there are women who want to see you be what you were born to be. There are women who know that they need protection, that they need your guidance and your companionship, that allowing you your natural strength doesn\u2019t mean that they are weak by default. It takes a strong woman to say to a man, \u201cI will obey you, even when I don\u2019t want to.\u201d It takes a strong woman to let someone else lead. Never forget that.<\/p>\n I hope that we as a culture we have gone as far as we will go in the de-masculation of our men. I hope that the days of \u00a0women getting preference simply because of their gender are drawing to a close. I hope that the time when Toni Morrison is put on syllabi over Shakespeare or Joyce will end as soon as humanely possible. But I fear that unless there is a rapid and heartfelt change in the attitude and actions of the women in our country, things will remain too much the same.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NB* Please read the comment section at the end of the post before you swear off my blog forever as a load of misogynistic crap. There are some excellent points brought up, as well as an apology or two and some clarifications. As I say in the post, I\u2019m fumbling through this argument.\u00a0 Sometimes I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n