And yes, boys can be taught to act weak and much like the sob sisters. The problem is they aren’t. Not even when they’re raised to act that way. The end result is that they don’t know how to express their strength and they’ve never been taught to modulate it. Men who have only been taught to “act sensitive” but have no other discipline, no other moral, no other idea of what it means to be a man, will in fact hoist the pirate flag. Whenever a memoir surfaces from the sixties, the thing that always strikes me is how these men who were considered champions of women were in fact nasty little petulant creatures, taking advantage as much as possible. Say, the story of Ayers raping a girl and then making her sleep with someone she had no interest in, by bullying her with the idea that not to do so would be unenlightened.This is really the problem, isn't it? Generally I don't have any problem with women I know who self-identify as feminists: in fact, usually I like them, as I usually like tough-minded people who will argue with me.
I may think they are wrong on the facts or wrong in interpretation. Yet in the last few years I've realized that the real feminists are working it out for themselves, and left to it will eventually come around. There's nothing I can say that will convince them, but the feminist historians working in (say) medieval studies are looking hard for examples of tough women making their own way in the world. And looking for them, they're finding them -- everywhere they look. It may take a while to turn over the old orthodoxy of 'the patriarchy,' and they certainly aren't trying to do it, but at some point the weight of the evidence they are producing day by day is going to force them to take a second look at their guiding mythology.
And that's good. It's great, in fact. It's a tremendous service to human understanding of the past, and I'm excited to see it flowering before us. I enjoy reading their articles, lit with the joy of discovering a kindred spirit in yet another one of their ancestors. It fills me with hope that, one day when they're ready, we'll be able to talk anew about the blessed legacy we received who were lucky enough to be descended from the Men and Women of the West.
So far, so good. But the men: or 'men,' more appropriately. They aren't worth spit. The only thing that keeps them from getting smacked in the jaws on a regular basis is the profound sense of pity you can't help but have for them. They are worthless, pathetic creatures -- until, like the Ayers of her example, they work out their sleaze on someone else.
The young women, I think, will work themselves out in time.
The young men need to come back in under the weight of the -- well, 'patriarchy' isn't quite right. The Brotherhood. They need to fall back in under the mastery of better men than they are, so they might become brothers and better men themselves. The best of their nature does not come naturally. It is a product of long and ancient art.
