Posted on 04/03/2014 5:05:45 PM PDT by markomalley
Cultural progressives often talk about something called “hegemonic masculinity.” By this progressives and feminists mean the standards we use to determine what an ideal man is in a particular culture. Michael Kimmel and Amy Aronson, in The Gendered Society Reader, describe American hegemonic masculinity this way:
In an important sense there is only one complete unblushing male in America: a young, married, white, urban, northern, heterosexual, Protestant, father, of college education, fully employed, of good complexion, weight, and height, and a recent record in sports . . . Any male who fails to qualify in any one of these ways is likely to view himself–during moments at least–as unworthy, incomplete and inferior.
With this definition, progressives and feminists are on what seems to be a campaign to “dismantle” any sense of “American” masculinity. Additionally, part of the mission is to redefine all of America’s problems in terms of what males, especially white males, have done to ruin society. As many have argued before, the first step in solving social ills is to pathologize boyhood and numb it into oblivion.
Esquire Magazine recently ran a story titled “The Drugging Of The American Boy” which highlights the seemingly settled disposition that developing masculinity is something to be diagnosed as ADHD and, therefore, a problem to be solved. The article cites this data:
The number of children who have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder—overwhelmingly boys—in the United States has climbed at an astonishing rate over a relatively short period of time. The Centers for Disease Control first attempted to tally ADHD cases in 1997 and found that about 3 percent of American schoolchildren had received the diagnosis, a number that seemed roughly in line with past estimates. But after that year, the number of diagnosed cases began to increase by at least 3 percent every year. Then, between 2003 and 2007, cases increased at a rate of 5.5 percent each year. In 2013, the CDC released data revealing that 11 percent of American schoolchildren had been diagnosed with ADHD, which amounts to 6.4 million children between the ages of four and seventeen—a 16 percent increase since 2007 and a 42 percent increase since 2003. Boys are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed as girls—15.1 percent to 6.7 percent. By high school, even more boys are diagnosed—nearly one in five.
Once we concluded that boyhood is abnormal, and in need of medication, it followed that “there are high-energy kids—normal boys, most likely—who had the misfortune of seeing a doctor who had scant (if any) training in psychiatric disorders during his long-ago residency but had heard about all these new cases and determined that a hyper kid whose teacher said he has trouble sitting still in class must have ADHD,” the article notes. As a result, “among the 6.4 million are a significant percentage of boys who are swallowing pills every day for a disorder they don’t have.”
What are we doing to young boys? The side effects of the drugs used to address the pathology known as “boyhood” include heart problems, bipolar disorder, increased aggressive behavior, manic symptoms, sleeping problems, weight loss, suicidal ideation, and more. Is is worth it? Are we better off as a society with the massive use of these drugs?
Granted, this is not to say that there are no cases of legitimate ADHD but there is now a major incentive by the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture these boyhood numbing drugs to encourage more and more doctors to prescribe them. The dramatic increase in the prescribing of these drugs raises all sorts of questions. For example, what has changed in American culture that, all of a sudden, we have the dramatic increase in ADHD? Is there something unique to American culture that produces this masculine “abnormality”?
Why is that, for example, American boys are diagnosed with ADHD but boys who exhibit the same behaviors in other countries, like France, are not? There are more questions to be asked for sure but we do know that medicating boyhood does not develop the moral virtues needed for men to be skilled in the art of living well. Instead it feeds into the false narrative that masculinity is something that needs to be fixed instead of directed toward the common good.
One day, if I have my way, feminist, gendercidal nutjobs are going to get what they deserve.
After fifty years of being called a Nazi, perhaps we'll have to finally fulfill their expectations. That will be a great many bodies to dispose of. Have you considered long excavations on local golf courses? /sarc
I prefer to think of it as the Israelis hunting down the Nazis after it was over.
My youngest boy is the middle child, 1 year younger than my oldest but 4 years older than my 1 year old girl. He definately has a lot of energy and if he lacks structure he will misbehave. Some female teacher suggested he was ADHD and he might be in need of medication. I told her she was a poor excuse for an educator of young children and suggested that maybe she review her own regiment of meds and choice of career.
He is very smart and gets very into his work but craves structure and discipline.
Feminists and progressives: they learned at their mother’s knee. “Mother” learned from HER mother and all the way back to ... WHEN? When did all these feminazis and progressonazis get their start?
At some point all observations were interpreted as dominating women. On Rush he mentioned something about some feminist saying steakhouses were a place where men go to talk about enslaving women. I’m not sure how that works but no one ever said these victim groups on the left were sane.
Originally, you can pin it down to historical factors (WWII really did not help), industrial and commercial changes, birth control and abortion, but most importantly Marxist infiltration as old Joe warned against. Remember, the most influential feminist novel, The Feminine Mystique, was written by Betty Friedan, who lied throughout the book pretending it accurately depicted her life as a suburban mouse when in fact she was a violent whore who slandered her husband relentlessly, and she was a card-carrying member of CPUSA.
Lesbian feminist Valerie Solanas wrote the movement’s ‘black book’ once the it was in full swing in the USA. It was called ‘SCUM’, which stands for ‘Society for Cutting Up Men’. Solanas proposed a money-less Marxist society, where all men would be murdered, presumably at birth, and women would be made pregnant by artificial means.
This is a very sick little fifth column, closely linked to the remnants of the eugenics left and Marxist infiltration squads.
Most of those kids don’t need more than a family structure and a dad who is willing to apply the belt to the backside when circumstances warrant.
I am, and have been, horrified about all these chemicals we are foisting on our kids and have long predicted the consequences will be grave and unpredictable.
But the pharmaceutical industry definitely deserves castigation in this regard. ADHD drugs are big business and government is a big buyer.
Now, this would be a VERY interesting study. How many of these kids getting meds shoved down their throats are private school types and how many are public school types. Anyone want to made a guess as to the ratio?
“This is a very sick little fifth column, closely linked to the remnants of the eugenics left and Marxist infiltration squads.”
I’ve noticed them salted away at all levels of ‘law enforcement’. Mostly prosecutorial and admin, where they can control policy and application.
These boys also need to be able to pray at school, climb trees, shoot nerf guns at each other in the playground, play marbles for keeps, and generally just be boys.
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