Tag: femininity

Is Masculinity Bad?

Is it bad to be a man?

Recently, I was still going through The Bully Society and I was reading about the bully economy. While the book has a lot to say about the problem of bullying, it fails a lot in the area of solutions, and in this case tying the problem in with capitalism. Am I to think that if we went to socialism, all the kids in the world would join hands and sing Kum-Bu-Yah together?

Anyway, the author notes that some of the attributes given to masculinity are also similar to capitalism. Those are aggressive, competitive, and powerful. That is the way the market is seen sometimes. I could defend capitalism here, but I have done that in other posts.

For now, I notice that it seems that being aggressive, powerful, and competitive are bad things inherently. There is no doubt these can be used for evil purposes, but that does not mean that they are evil. I can use my car in my apartment parking lot to drive to work and church. I can also use it to drive over little old ladies crossing the street. The car is not the issue. The person is the issue.

You can think it wrong for a man to be powerful, but if a man is going to make a positive change, he needs some power. You can think it is wrong for him to be aggressive, but if he is going to go forward in pursuit of a goal and stand up to evil, he needs to be powerful. You can think it is wrong for him to be competitive, but if he is going to want to excel, he needs to want to be better than those who don’t.

I can say on my end that while I do not see myself as aggressive or powerful, competitive does ring true, but that is what has caused me to study academically far more. It is wanting to be the best at what I do that has got me here. Had I not had this kind of spirit in me, I would have heard the doom and gloom about a diagnosis of autism and said “Oh well. Guess I’ll never amount to anything.”

What would be better is to ask the question of what a man is instead of saying that those ideas of masculinity are bad, or at least implying that they are. This is part of the problem. We do not know what men are, but usually it is assumed that whatever they are, they are bad.

If society does not know what men and women are, it should not be a shock that we have issues like failing to understand marriage and relationships or that we have debates over transgenderism. I acknowledge that in some ways, the question of what a man or a woman is is a simple question. In another way, it is a complex question. It gets to a question of essences, which I consider a problem for a purely materialistic position.

So if a man does not have any indicator that he is a man, then what will he do? He will try to seek it elsewhere. He could do so by being powerful in a gang. He could do so by being competitive in sports or even video games. He could do so by being aggressive in business or with women. Some of these are fine, but some aren’t. It is fine to be competitive on the athletic field, provided you are not wronging the others out there. It is not fine to be powerful in a gang and seek to do wrong to other men and women. It is fine to be confident with women. It is not fine to be so aggressive that you force your way onto them.

If a man doesn’t know if he is a man, he could still try harmful ways. He could think he has to sleep with as many women as possible, highly persuasive since sex often leaves a man feeling like a man. He could be willing to cheat to get ahead in sports, say by taking steroids. He could seek power by trying to beat up other men or even kill them. He could try to get material possessions as a status symbol to everyone else.

By the way, women will also try counterparts, but seeing as I am a man, I am talking about them.

What he likely will not try is to try to build up character and be a man of virtue. We have lost sight of virtue as what builds up a person and ultimately a society. A society cannot last if goodness is not one of the goals of society. If all a society cares about is going for all that you can get and the vapid pursuit of pleasure, it will fail.

Unfortunately, not much is said about that. Everything else is blamed. It’s the video games. It’s the guns. It’s the schools. It’s capitalism.

No. The problem is us.

We need to change.

We need a return to virtue and men being virtuous men and women being virtuous women. Unfortunately, with moral relativism, we don’t really know what virtue is either. The more we blame everything else, the less we will care about virtue.

Masculinity is not bad, but anything we do without virtue will taint everything else. We must return to that and I contend only Christianity can truly give us the virtue we need.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: The Toxic War On Masculinity Part 5

What happens when men embrace toxicity? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We’re going to have a short look tonight at this part. There comes a time when after awhile, people get so often told that they are such a way that they become such a way. This is what happened to men eventually. Want to keep labeling them as unfaithful and barbarians and everything else? It will not become a mark of shame. It will become a mark of pride.

And so it did. Men decided that this would be who they would be and let the women just deal with it. Unfortunately, the lie has gone on so long that now most of us believe it and we don’t even realize we believe it. Consider this one quote from Pearcey:

Sociologist David Popenoe, codirector of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, writes, “Men are not biologically attuned to being committed fathers. Left culturally unregulated, men’s sexual behaviour can be promiscuous, their paternity casual, their commitment to families weak.”

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (p. 169). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Many of you could be reading this and thinking, “Yes. No question about that one.” Pearcey has a different take:

Note the assumption that men are not created to be faithful husbands and fathers—a dangerous message that fosters male irresponsibility.

Pearcey, Nancy. The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (pp. 169-170). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

It’s so simple and yet it goes right through. Pearcey sees what many of us would take for granted and says that if we go this route then we are assuming men are a problem to begin with. Apparently, nothing is said about what women are created to be.

Within the past month or so, I posted on a story on the Babylon Bee Facebook page and had a feminist woman reply to me. It was on the topic of abortion and she was telling me if I wanted to eliminate abortion, I needed to deal with, and I will edit her language for the sake of some readers, but simply, men having an irresponsible release. It never occurred to this woman that it takes two to tango. She also said that if men do not control themselves, then women will have abortions. Yep. It’s all up to the men what the women do.

Thus, we live in a world where men are guilty of the crime of being men. You find some extremes where men form a manosphere and then manhood is often defined by how many women you sleep with. The women complain, but at the same time, they go right along. (Which means also the women have to be being just as promiscuous as the men, but there’s hardly anything said about controlling the female sex drive.)

Yet now what if we take this even further? What has this done to Christianity? Even in churches before the American Revolution it was noted that men were not nearly in attendance as much as women. What happens when masculinity is redefined?

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Femininity is a Good Thing

Is it good for a woman to be a woman? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I read some of a mystery every day. Yesterday morning, I read this in the one I’m going through now where a female detective is wanting to find out how to get close to a male suspect she wants to question.

“Rob Saunders is obviously a bit of a Casanova. You’re a young, pretty girl. You could use that to your advantage.”
“What? You’re not telling me to seduce him, are you?” cried Ellie.
“Oh, don’t look so shocked. I’m not suggesting that you sleep with him,” said Aunt Olive, clicking her tongue. “But a man like Rob… well, now, he’d be easy to interrogate if you know how to play him.” She saw Ellie’s expression. “Oh, come on, poppet! Calculated seduction is a time-honored tradition in intrigue and espionage! I know it’s not politically correct to say this nowadays, but you can achieve a lot with a suggestive smile and a show of cleavage.”
“Aunt Olive! You’ve just set the women’s lib movement back fifty years or something!”
“Rubbish!” snorted her aunt. “A woman who knows how to use her feminine charms to get what she wants is the one who’s truly empowered.”
I realize some people might think the language here is a bit crude and no, this is not a Christian work, but ultimately, as I read this passage, I had to agree with Aunt Olive in her basic point. The empowered woman is not the woman who tries to deny her femininity. It is the one who knows how to use it properly.
The feminist movement has really been very anti-woman. One of the main problems is that they set up a sort of competition between men and women. Men didn’t have this problem. Women did. Women wanted to be able to focus on a career, not worry about children, and not be seen as a piece of eye candy.
I am not against a woman having a career and not every woman will be a mother. Certainly a woman shouldn’t be treated as an object, but the way women went about these goals was wrong. It was not by being better at what they were, being women, but by trying to in essence not be women and be men.
So a man can have sex and not have to worry about carrying a baby for nine months as a result. No problem. Use birth control and if that doesn’t work, get an abortion. Deny your biological clock (Which men don’t have) and just work at your career and you decide when you want to have a baby, if you ever do. If men can walk around topless, women can too!
It hasn’t worked well for women.
Believe it or not women, if you want to get a real man, a man wants a woman who is a woman. He doesn’t want a woman who is trying to act like a man. He likes the things in a woman that set her apart from men.
That includes beauty.
That beauty is a good thing also. Yes. A woman can do a lot of damage to a man if she misuses her beauty and seduces him into doing things that he shouldn’t. However, she can also use that beauty to greatly inspire and motivate a man.
Consider Jacob in the Bible. When he sees Rachel, he’s immediately impressed by her beauty and when asked what his wages will be, he already knows. He wants Rachel! The text says he worked seven years, but they seemed like a short time because of his great love for her. I can imagine him easily out in the fields working hard and here comes Rachel walking by with a cute smile, the breeze blowing through her hair, the grace of her figure, everything, and Jacob just thinking “Soon.”
Then when the seven years is up (Is Jacob counting down the days), Jacob is awfully brazen and just goes to his future father-in-law and says “I’ve done my work. Give me your daughter. I want to sleep with her.”
That’s what the text literally says! I honestly can’t imagine going up to my former father-in-law on the day of the wedding and saying “You ready to give her up? I’m wanting to sleep with her.”
Now in the story, Jacob had to work seven more years for Rachel, but he did it. Why? Because female beauty is highly inspiring to a man. A man can do things he never would have dreamed of doing before just for female beauty. My ex-wife did cause some major good changes in me just because I was motivated by her beauty, something no one else could do.
Ladies. Keep this in mind also. Perhaps a guy who asks you out isn’t a ten in your minds, but consider this. If he is of good character, go out with him and see what changes can be brought about in him just because he wants you. You can inspire a man to be a man in ways he never was before just because your beauty has that effect on him. (Consider how in the Christmas special, Rudolph flies immediately just because Clarice says she thinks he’s cute.)
It’s the way God made the system. Enjoy it. He knew what He was doing.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

On Toxic Masculinity

Is masculinity a problem in our culture today? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Gillette has recently come out with an ad dealing with the problem of toxic masculinity. This is always a difficult term to talk about as no one I know really defines toxic masculinity. It can often be thought that a man being a man is guilty of toxic masculinity.

One example given in the video is a guy saying to a girl, “Smile, sweetie.” Perhaps it’s not necessarily the best thing to say, but if you turn yourself into a victim because you hear that, you have a far worse problem. Guys think women are beautiful and guys want women to smile. When my own wife has put up pictures of herself on Facebook, she has been told she needs to smile.

There has also been debate about the boys fighting in the video. Women have looked and said, “Bullying.” Men have looked and said “roughhousing.” The latter is not a problem at all. It’s how boys often bond with one another. Boys fight. You might say “Well, my son is a nerd. He’s not into fighting.”

Is that why he goes to see those superhero movies and Star Wars and plays video games with heroes fighting villains?

Yes. Even nerds fight in their own way. They may not be as physically capable of fighting with their own bodies, but they have the dreams just as much of being the heroes as their more physically capable fellow men do. Nerds can have just as much of a desire for adventure as other men do.

Today, we live in a culture that it trying greatly to feminize men. On the other hand, we’re also trying to make women into men. Consider the recent celebration in New York over an abortion bill. Don’t tell me that you see abortion as a sad evil when you light up a tower in pink to celebrate. These are people who actively want abortions and yet abortion is one of the most unfeminine actions there is. Abortion makes a mother into a murderer of her own children. However, women think they have to have this to be on the same playing field as men. Note also that about half of the victims in abortion will be women who are murdered.

Men meanwhile are guilty of great crimes if they think that a woman is beautiful and seek to pursue a relationship with her or compliment her. Now, of course, there can be always a danger. I do follow the Pence rule, which goes back to Billy Graham, of not letting myself be alone with women that are not family. The problem comes when as soon as a man expresses any interest, he is declared a pervert. At the same time, these women will ask where all the men are. They’re not there because any time they asked you out, they got shot down and learned eventually to not do it.

I have long held it as a policy to hold open the door for women. That is called being polite. Not so with the new feminists today. That is an insult. It is saying that they can’t open the door on their own. So if a man does something he thinks is nice and honoring to a woman, he is again a problem.

Men are also regularly told they need to be more peaceful in how they handle conflict. Years ago when I was a teenager, I did study karate for a season and we had a saying. Peace if we will, but power if we must. Men should always strive for peaceable means of resolving conflict, but sometimes peaceable means don’t work. Neville Chamberlain’s approach to Hitler did not stop him. It took leaders who stood up to him and fought back to stop him.

Interestingly, what was not addressed in the ad were countries that are Muslim who engage in female genital mutilation and throwing acid in women’s faces. Why did Gillette not say anything about this? Could it be that that was not politically correct? Gillette. You are not being courageous when you stand up and say whatever the culture around you is saying. If you want to show courage, go after Middle Eastern Muslim cultures that do this kind of behavior.

Men today live in a world where they are increasingly seen as villains because they are men. Most anything can nowadays be considered sexual harassment. A man will be less prone to even ask a woman out because he thinks he could be charged with a crime. This despite men living in a world where women try to look their best, which they should, and sex is all around him in media and in advertising. Men are wired to think about sex and yet if they respond to how they are wired and compliment a woman, they are punished for it.

Men are by nature creatures of high energy and we are not as relational as women are. When I talk with my friends, normally it’s about politics, apologetics, or video games. That’s how we bond. Women don’t bond the same way. That’s okay.

Men are also not perverts for thinking women are beautiful. We are designed to be that way. I was in a group on Facebook a couple of weeks ago asking why we think certain parts of our wife’s anatomy, none specifically named, are attractive. What did most men say? “We don’t know. They just are.” I pointed out that if we say that their bodies don’t matter, we’re not being Christian. We’re being Gnostic. Christ was born in a body, lived in a body, died in a body, rose again in a body, and today is still in a body. The body matters. The female body was made to be beautiful to man and as a married man who sees a female body, I have to say that God did a very good job.

Men are more aggressive, but like all good things, it can be controlled and directed. That energy and passion and aggression will cause men to do great things. The women in their lives also have a great influence. A woman can influence a man so he will do things he never dreamed possible before all because of the love of the woman. My wife got me to change my diet for instance. That might not be a big deal to you, but it is a big deal if you have Aspergers and haven’t changed your diet in about 30 years or so.

Gillette is not doing well from what I see in the culture. Recently at the grocery store here, I saw in the discount section a lot of Gillette products. I was playing a gameshow on my phone last night where the host mentioned a deal on Gillette products and the comments section immediately lit up with people saying no.

The huge majority of men don’t have a problem with toxic masculinity. They have the opposite. They need to be more masculine. Gillette is just engaging in the feminization of men. Where will the women be who push this when they want the men to protect them and the men are not there?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Should We Use Gender-Inclusive Language For God?

Would it be wrong to describe God as feminine? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I recently got into a discussion on Facebook on if we should use gender-inclusive language for God. Would it really be a problem if we used more feminine language to describe God? Could it help men and women to better relate to God?

The motive is good I am sure, but that does not mean that the action itself is. We know there are many ideas that are tried today that have excellent intentions, but they do not produce excellent results. What we would need to know is if there is any data that would help.

Fortunately, there is. This is in a book I am currently going through (Though I have paused to read Bart Ehrman’s newest that came out today) called Why Men Hate Going To Church. It is by David Murrow and I have found it to be incredibly eye-opening. For my own part, I can relate to much of what he says.

Murrow says that there are many men who believe in God and hold orthodox beliefs, but they just don’t care for church. I can say there are many times I can be sitting in a service and my mind is more on a game I’d like to play when I get home. Why? Because in much of church there is nothing challenging and you often hear the same kinds of messages over and over which is pure application. There is little wrestling with the text, serious exegesis, going back to the historicity of the accounts, etc.

One exception to this was a church we attended in Knoxville called The Point. I remember still texting a friend of mine into apologetics during the service and saying “I can’t believe I’m hearing a sermon on the Conquest in the Old Testament.” Some of you might be aghast at texting during church. Don’t be. ours encouraged it. They wanted us to let people know what we were doing and also to text in our questions which the preacher would answer afterward and if it was a lengthy response, he would put up a video message of it during the week.

Murrow says that we have in many ways feminized the church. This is not to say that women are unimportant, but when women dominate a church, the church doesn’t often get the benefits that men often bring, which is greater risk-taking and such. We become internally focused about the family of God instead of externally about the kingdom of God.

Murrow has no thoughts of changing the Gospel. Absolutely not. Instead, remove the feminine focus. Some sayings that guys have a hard time with that he gives as examples are intimacy with God and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Intimacy in the Bible refers to sex. Men don’t want to think about sex with God. We love to think about sex and to have it, but not that way. We also don’t talk about personal relationships. If I called a male friend or they called me and one of us said we wanted to talk about our personal relationship, we would be asking if the other was gay.

Jesus does do many things that are not seen as masculine today, such as weeping openly, and no doubt some of our ideas about being a man are wrong, but not all. Jesus is not just the Lamb of God. He is the Lion of Judah. We have often turned Him into Mr. Rogers.

Years ago I read Five Views on the Historical Jesus. One view presented was John Dominic Crossan’s. He talked about how John the Baptist preached a fiery message and got arrested for it and put in jail and executed. Jesus saw this and decided to tone His down to a much greater message of love. Big problem with this theory. This Jesus is a mamby-pamby weakling. This Jesus is not a threat to anyone. This Jesus would never be crucified.

Unfortunately, the data is in and men do not really like going to church when church seems too feminine. The solution again is not to change the Gospel, but to make it a place where men feel they belong. They need to be in a place where they’re not ashamed to tell their fellow men where they are. Men need a place where they think masculinity is accepted and welcomed.

How is this going to be helped by speaking of God as feminine? Men look to other men to be leaders and having God described as a woman won’t help. Yes, I know there are some passages of Scripture that speak of God in some feminine terminology, but these are the exception. Most of it is masculine and needs to be emphasized.

We can also be assured that when men start going to church, women will go more too. Women will go more because wives and children often follow the husbands. Not always, but generally if you want to win a family to Jesus, you start with the father. Women will also go if single to find a good and godly man as well at a church where real men are gathered.

While I can understand the desire to help people feel more comfortable at church, I can’t support the idea of changing language for God. If God has described Himself in terminology that’s largely male, maybe we should leave it at that and consider that God can describe Himself better than we can. A little idea can have disastrous results down the line.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

 

Why Is Bruce An Exception?

What do you do when a man’s very being says he’s a woman? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

My wife shared on her Facebook a meme of some soldiers going to say they were going to congratulate Bruce Jenner for his courage, obviously said in sarcasm. Some of her friends from high school showed up to try to correct on her on this point which naturally means that her apologist husband has to go to work. I spent some time telling one that Bruce is still a man and why should we think otherwise? The reply I got was that “her” very being said “she” was a woman. Well that’s interesting. What about these other cases then?

Here for instance is Jerusalem Syndrome.

In this case, someone goes to Jerusalem who has otherwise been a normal person, and then believes themselves to be a biblical figure, like Jesus, Samson, or Mary.
If we are loving to such people, should we treat them like they are such figures, or should we seek to get them the help they need even though their very being says they are such figures?

Here is Cotard Delusion. The person with this delusion is convinced that they are dead and often have evidence from their own experience to back that! Their very being again tells them they’re dead. Are we loving to them if we treat them like they’re dead?

Here is Capgras Syndrome. In this, the person thinks their loved one has been replaced by a double or impostor. Is the loving thing to do agree with them even though they are mentally convinced of this?

Fregoli Delusion:
In this case, the person thinks that multiple people are really one or two persons in disguise. Is it loving to go along with this belief?

Apotemnophilia. In this case, the person thinks they should amputate healthy parts of their body. Is the loving thing to do to rush this person off to see a surgeon?

After writing that, I found more delusions and I’m sure there are still more out there.

Here is Truman Show Delusion. If you’ve ever seen the movie, that’s what it’s like. The person thinks they’re living in a reality show with cameras and actors all around them.

There is also even a video game delusion. In this, the person, yes, thinks that they are in a video game. One case of this involved stealing a more powerful car at gunpoint so someone could get bonus points.

There is also clinical lycanthropy. In this case, the person believes that they have turned into a werewolf.

We recognize each of these as delusions and we do so by looking at reality. Why not do the same in the case of Bruce?

Because I do not intend to participate in the delusion, I will still be referring to Bruce as Bruce. I will still be using the masculine pronouns in description. I have no desire whatsoever to join the Cult of Caitlyn.

In Christ,
Nick Peters