Posted on 03/03/2013 6:04:59 AM PST by Kaslin
This past week an episode of Sesame Street set off a firestorm of debate over whether a boy muppet named Telly should be ashamed that his muppet friends caught him playing with dolls.
In one corner "traditionalists" who called out the episode as gender and sex confused. In the other "modern feminists" who were offended by almost everything the traditionalists said and believe.
In light of these op-eds and arguments I decided to do a bit of personal surveying for myself.
I popped the question to my bride and her best friend as the two couples were headed to Gramercy (in Manhattan) for dinner on Friday night.
"What do you think about boys playing with dolls?" I asked.
"If the dolls are laying around (belong to another child), then it's unlikely to bother me," one of them replied. "If they happen to pick it up, if they are at friend's homes that are girls then it's almost unavoidable."
"But would you ever buy a doll for your young son?" I followed up.
"NEVER!!!" came the reply.
The fervor with which they answered the second question intrigued me. In essence it boiled down to the reality that boys are boys, they are designed to do boy things, and grow from boys into men. Throwing feminine play into the mix delays, interrupts, or intrudes on the development of masculine identity.
In one article Caryn Rivadeneira, writing for Christianity Today, in her even more boldly titled piece, "God Made Boys To Play With Dolls," she argues that: "When we say baby dolls are for girls, that only girls should cuddle and coo dolls, we claim that babies are women's domains, that only mothers should rock and coo and play with their children."
Even though I disagree with her premise, I also disagree with her comparison, and the implied conclusion.
She is arguing that boys should play with dolls because men should become the primary or equal caregivers for newborns? Really?
In a world where abject fatherlessness already exists. In a world where that fatherlessness has single-handidly created the largest welfare state in American economic history. In a world where discernment and wisdom about appropriate sexual behavior is threatening the very well being of our children's future...
Do we really need to question whether or not women are--by nature--designed to be--better at nurturing children?
There is a fascination with the theological and political left in America to appear to have an absence of judgment against immorality, while simultaneously attempting to judge the theological and political right so as to win popularity with the culture, to appear to be intellectual, and to imply that God would love it all.
But to be candid, we are entering "stupid territory" now.
I even confessed to the girls last night that I imagine it won't be all that long into the future before someone writes an article for Christianity Today on the idea of allowing the man to carry the baby to term (since it appears to be medically possible) and that in some way some person will write an article defending it as the ultimate sign of feminist justice.
Meanwhile God sits and laughs at us.
Why? Because we are going to such great lengths to go the other way around the universe to arrive at a simple conclusion: "What's best for children?"
No God didn't make boys to play with dolls. God created boys to grow up and become strong men who would provide for their family and would protect them from the harmful elements of this life. That is the true core of manhood at it's most basic element.
But men that I know personally who excel in that, also generally tend to be some of the most tender-hearted fathers I've ever seen. Fathers whose children feel their love, appreciate their sacrifices, seek diligently to obey or to make them proud, and even desire to pass on a similar legacy when they become parents themselves.
Sometimes the modern feminist (someone who believes in "sameness" between men and women and NOT "equality") ties themselves into pretzel-like knots to argue something foolish to replace something traditional--almost always for no good reason.
In life children are a blessing. In training them to become responsible for their own behavior and consequences it is important to groom them with truth. And the truth is few boys who ever became great fathers ever "played with dolls."
Taking responsibility for your future, owning your actions and behaviors, understanding the choices you make in this life will affect those you love, and preparing them to be ready for it, is what our young men most need to learn.
Miraculously... Having affection for their flesh and blood, learning to be tender with them when they are little and can't sleep, and loving them with all their heart comes much more instinctually to fathers than most feminists would like to believe.
And I should know...
That humility, affection, tenderness and love grew deeper with all three of my sons, and I never played with dolls.
Before calling out other’s manhoods
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Whose ‘manhood’ was questioned?
I did not question anyone’s manhood - particularly yours.
If you don’t feel comfortable or WORRY about what I or anyone else may think of your helmet and/or spandex is not ‘my fault’.
You/I might think a person wearing a suit 7 days a week is foolish.
You/I might think a grown man wearing a baseball cap is foolish.
You/I may think someone in Philadelphia or NY wearing a ‘ten gallon hat’ is foolish.
You/I might think a ‘fattish’ person wearing tight Levis is foolish.
I think a grown man wearing Spandex is foolish.
ALL of the above, feel free to do...I do not care, there are somethings I will and some I wont do.
As to MY manhood because of an uncontested divorce, I hung in there till ALL my family was settled, had their own families, house paid and vehicles paid for (mine, not kids)and wife not having to be dependent upon me.
In my opinion, my X wife continues to act like a fool, and in retrospect she always did - Most times when people ‘go after’ their X’s it is because they are bitter or angry or just plain ticked off.
HOW does that question MY manhood?
I am sorry sir, but you are acting the typical Lib - when you have nothing constructive to say, you attack personally.
This is pure manipulation - brain washing. Any parent who allows their innocent children to be brain washed by these evil freaks deserves hell.
When I was young my girlfriends and I ran a social experiment with our play group. We gave the boys dolls and girls dump trucks. The boys used the dump trucks as “strollers” and burried the dolls and the girls ran around rescuing the dolls.
My son turned his play group doll into a robot. He took the head, arms and legs off the doll and attached them to a battery housing and put it on a remote controled SUV truck. It was a robot and the doll was parts.
Boys are boys and girls are girls unless they are manipulated and oppressed. Everyone present in the play group knew this in outcome from our experiment.
nope my boys didn’t do makeup, they did have green faces for Halloween though
I get what your saying, but it can go overboard; consider one "women's chore": cooking.
Now I can cook decently well, despite being single male not yet over thirty... that doesn't make me homosexual/sissy.
Sewing would be another activity which could be considered 'feminine'... and yet if you stop to think about it, it's glaringly obvious that men have done it long enough that it became a name: Taylor (which is masculine if a given-name).
You could even look at teaching as a profession, it's fairly dominated by women (at 80% in public schools), yet this was not always so.
I think the 'sissy-ification' is a result that we-as-a-society do not value the "traditionally masculine" traits: logical thinking, feats of strength, tenacity, standing-against-the-crowd, and in some ways virtue. (Virtue comes from the Latin word vir, which means man.)
haha
you are hilarious
LOL...
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