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Modern Manliness and the Perpetual State of Low Expectations
Acculturated ^ | February 14 | R. J. Moeller

Posted on 03/18/2013 9:51:01 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Kay Hymowitz posits the following conclusion regarding the current culture of masculinity in the United States:

Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This “pre-adulthood” has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it’s time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn’t bring out the best in men.

As someone who is personally putting his twenties behind him, finally finding a certain degree of success in the line of work I’ve been struggling to break into for half a decade and happily occupied in a serious relationship, let me be the first to say that Hymowitz is categorically correct in her summation of the situation.

Painfully so, in fact. This one hits a little too close to home.....

(Excerpt) Read more at acculturated.com ...


TOPICS: Education; Society
KEYWORDS: feminism; manliness; masculinity; women
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To: noinfringers2

I agree that we need to figure out how to create a system where everybody contributes into it, instead of feeding off of it.


61 posted on 03/19/2013 12:11:32 AM PDT by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults)
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To: yldstrk
Dam

I thought u were the man

I can usually tell

Boy am i stupid

My wife did what u did

Anyhow

Back in my day

Give me some time with a genuine hot fembot....rare i know and without exception they would confess they hated being under my spell....a real man who desired them unabashedly and opened doors and said honey and darling

Alpha and they sorta surrendered best they could

And they liked it...felt secure and wanted

Wanted to get pregnant and all that

Its in all women truly

Feminism for anyone but lesbians and ugly women is a delusion

They want a man...a real one

Hell they make movies about this....Swept Away...the original

Husbands and Lovers...lol

Shakespeare even got it....

62 posted on 03/19/2013 12:27:36 AM PDT by wardaddy (wanna know how my kin felt during Reconstruction in Mississippi, you fixin to find out firsthand)
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To: yldstrk
well today’s men are pretty unreliable and no one thinks it is their job to protect anyone, they are all wanting to take advantage, get over, be in love with themselves, get rich

So you're first comment was that anyone who blames women for everything is whining...and then you blame everything on men. I'm going to go ahead and guess that you gulped down your helping of modern feminism and asked for seconds.

While I don't blame women, per se, for the fact that there are a lot of effeminate guys out there these days, here's a sentiment that you won't like: feminism has turned a huge chunk of American women into useless sluts, and the family court system, at the behest of feminism, has become a de facto system of slavery for men. Even if a guy managed to find a woman worth marrying in this day and age, it would be like playing Russian Roulette to marry her. I don't blame young men for opting out of that mess at all.
63 posted on 03/19/2013 12:28:14 AM PDT by fr_freak
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To: yldstrk

Yes, but women like you are becoming increasingly rare these days. Most women demand very different things, fueled by all the humanist sociology bs that spews out of the universities and the TV. And men of course adapt to that.


64 posted on 03/19/2013 1:30:02 AM PDT by Vanders9
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To: mylife

Exactly right.


65 posted on 03/19/2013 1:30:45 AM PDT by Vanders9
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To: mylife

Amen to that. Women can start putting their clothes back on. Men will not compete against women, nor will they compete against a culture that has become so repulsively feminized.


66 posted on 03/19/2013 3:14:08 AM PDT by AdaGray (squi)
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To: mylife

Financially independent of their parents; being able to sustain themselves without subsidy.


67 posted on 03/19/2013 3:38:00 AM PDT by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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To: Jonty30

Because government granted a monopoly to certain corporations that are “accredited”. Otherwise, you’re completely correct.

The education establishment is just a group of crony capitalists protecting their pile.


68 posted on 03/19/2013 3:43:28 AM PDT by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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To: wastedyears

White male = shut up, suffer, pay, pay more, and be despised for not paying enough.


69 posted on 03/19/2013 3:55:17 AM PDT by wally_bert (There are no winners in a game of losers. I'm Tommy Joyce, welcome to the Oriental Lounge.)
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To: mylife
I would suggest that a major reason Men Are no longer men is because Women will not allow it. They what you to be steadfast, but spontaneous, tough, but sensitive, a rock and a willow. Fix the car and be able to bake a cherry pie.

A lot of the posters on this thread apparently did not read the original article by Hymowitz:

What explains this puerile shallowness? I see it as an expression of our cultural uncertainty about the social role of men. It's been an almost universal rule of civilization that girls became women simply by reaching physical maturity, but boys had to pass a test. They needed to demonstrate courage, physical prowess or mastery of the necessary skills. The goal was to prove their competence as protectors and providers. Today, however, with women moving ahead in our advanced economy, husbands and fathers are now optional, and the qualities of character men once needed to play their roles—fortitude, stoicism, courage, fidelity—are obsolete, even a little embarrassing.

Today's pre-adult male is like an actor in a drama in which he only knows what he shouldn't say. He has to compete in a fierce job market, but he can't act too bossy or self-confident. He should be sensitive but not paternalistic, smart but not cocky. To deepen his predicament, because he is single, his advisers and confidants are generally undomesticated guys just like him.

Single men have never been civilization's most responsible actors; they continue to be more troubled and less successful than men who deliberately choose to become husbands and fathers. So we can be disgusted if some of them continue to live in rooms decorated with "Star Wars" posters and crushed beer cans and to treat women like disposable estrogen toys, but we shouldn't be surprised.

Relatively affluent, free of family responsibilities, and entertained by an array of media devoted to his every pleasure, the single young man can live in pig heaven—and often does. Women put up with him for a while, but then in fear and disgust either give up on any idea of a husband and kids or just go to a sperm bank and get the DNA without the troublesome man. But these rational choices on the part of women only serve to legitimize men's attachment to the sand box. Why should they grow up? No one needs them anyway. There's nothing they have to do.

They might as well just have another beer.

70 posted on 03/19/2013 4:14:05 AM PDT by raybbr (People who still support Obama are either a Marxist or a moron. No, they are both.)
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To: BuckeyeTexan
I bake cherry pies. I race motorcycles and surf big, big waves in Mexico and Hawaii, as well.

If you're young and sexy, maybe I'll come over to Texas and bake you a cherry pie right now - ))

71 posted on 03/19/2013 4:55:59 AM PDT by atc23 (The Confederacy was the single greatest conservative resistance to federal authority ever.u)
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To: mylife

“I would suggest that a major reason Men Are no longer men is because Women will not allow it.”..............

The problem the writer discusses is very real - and unfortunately there is a similar problem with modern women. They don’t behave like what was once thought to be normal behavior in women.

So, we are left with immature yong men, and with women who behave with no shame, are immodest, are not expected to be maternal in nature. Our crass culture trains our young girls even as early as 5 and 6 years of age to desire clothes that are suggestive, put on makeup at age 10, learn about how to do a BJ, and how to use contraceptives so as to be a W&#$e in training.

Then our culture yells about cigarettes causing great expences to out medical system; too much soft drinks are unhealthy, etc. Now, they may indeed be unhealthy, but WHAT ABOUT THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM - PROMISCUITY???

It is extremely unhealthy and expensive to our health systems. It keeps our young people as slaves to their natural appetites, and really does put pressure upon young people to be promiscuous.

Why should we be surprsed when young men are immature when young women have been trained/forced to put out at no cost to these men?


72 posted on 03/19/2013 5:03:20 AM PDT by Gumdrop
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To: mylife; BuckeyeTexan
Cooking is for a reasonably intelligent person. It is chemistry and thermodynamics and how the two interact.

Modern society (American society) revels in its ignorance of the scientific and the spiritual.

I've found that women and men that cannot grasp cooking will often claim that it is "beneath" them when the truth is that they're just not smart enough to do it.

73 posted on 03/19/2013 5:07:15 AM PDT by atc23 (The Confederacy was the single greatest conservative resistance to federal authority ever.u)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Have to have that 4000 square foot house. Have to have the BMW and Suburban. Have to be beautiful. Have to have the vacation in Barbados. And have to have them right away. You don’t have them? You’re falling behind! Husband and wife work. Damn the kids! You need stuff! Hugh Heffner, Hollywood and Madison Avenue have us chasing our tails.


74 posted on 03/19/2013 5:52:20 AM PDT by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: mylife

Yes, and another big factor is that we’ve destroyed marriage as a institution. The author foolishly expects men to continue to aspire to that ideal, when it doesn’t exist anymore. It would be as if our test of manhood was a guy owning five slaves by the end of his twenties, and then judging modern men as deficient. Ludicrous.


75 posted on 03/19/2013 6:35:08 AM PDT by Boogieman
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To: Gumdrop
...but WHAT ABOUT THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM - PROMISCUITY???

BINGO!!

Government and its' ilk on every level understood this. If they could destroy marriage and the traditional family they would make the populace more needy of government.

By teaching people to cater to just their baser needs (sex, food, fun) then the Government could basically do whatever it wanted to do as long as it supplied the ingredients for those base instincts and nothing more.

Destroying women by teaching them it is not only OK but great to bed flop, and keeping men on their heels by ever changing rules and laws regarding their interactions with females, allows Government to wipe out our freedoms and liberties.

76 posted on 03/19/2013 6:59:44 AM PDT by OldMissileer
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To: mylife
They want instant gratification at every turn.

That's what the shooter gaming world is like now. Call of Duty reigns supreme, and damn the SOCOM crowd.

77 posted on 03/19/2013 8:39:30 AM PDT by wastedyears (I'm a gamer not because I choose to have no life, but because I choose to have many.)
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To: JCBreckenridge
I guess my question here - where are all the women?

They're out there. Sometimes we guys just look in all the wrong places and wind up believing the good ones are all gone.

78 posted on 03/19/2013 10:16:42 AM PDT by Windflier (To anger a conservative, tell him a lie. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.)
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To: Windflier

Well, I’m going to have to keep looking till I find one who’s not got 17 kiddos in tow with different daddies and who likes me. :)

The second part is the really hard part!


79 posted on 03/19/2013 10:27:35 AM PDT by JCBreckenridge (Texas is a state of mind - Steinbeck)
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To: atc23

That’s very true. Women who can’t cook usually refuse to do so.

As I said up-thread, my depression-era grandparents raised me. My grandfather encouraged my interest in power tools. He built seven houses from the ground up in his lifetime and my grandmother was right there beside him nailing sheetrock and shingles. I do all of my own home repair and maintenance because that’s how I was raised.

But Grandpa also demanded that I learn how to cook alongside my grandmother. I’ll never forget the conversation we had right before my first lesson in making “the perfect flaky pie crust.” I complained that “those things come pre-made now, Papa. I don’t need to know that stuff.” He got red in the face and pointed his finger in mine. “And just what are you gonna do if hard times come your way and you can’t buy a pre-made pie crust, missy?” I shrugged realizing I wasn’t as smart as I thought. “Go on. Get in the kitchen, missy. You’ll be of no use to any man if you can’t make a good pie crust!”

I had the best parents on planet earth.


80 posted on 03/19/2013 10:27:51 AM PDT by BuckeyeTexan (There are those that break and bend. I'm the other kind. ~Steve Earle)
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