One Hundred Years of Men’s Rights Have Come To Nothing

In drafting the last post in response to one on another blog, I thought of a graphic but didn’t have the time and energy to dig it out until now.  I don’t know who came up with it or where it even come from anymore.  But it points out that:

1. Feminism is a much older way of thought that most people tend to think.
2. Feminism is ultimately ill-defined to the point that anyone that seeks to be against it always fails.  A proper solution to a problem always begins with an accurate definition.
3. The nature of power and all that it is predicates that those with it will not give it up willingly.   When those in power are wrong, it will always require some pain in order to remove them from that power.
4. Yet few will come up with an accurate definition or an effective solution, nor will support the actions required to enact an effective solution. Therefore, the problem will never be dealt with.

Links and Comments #12

Time for another round of sharing things I’ve been reading:

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Unmasking Feminism commenter Lyn87 writes on the nature of game

The problem is not that enough men don’t know how to fake masculinity as well as a Roosh or a Heartiste, it’s that forty years of feminist zeitgeist and tens of millions of single mothers have eviscerated the appreciation of masculine virtues in the western world. In short, boys and young men don’t need to learn how to fake being masculine from nihilistic snake-oil salesmen, they need to learn to be masculine by masculine men – primarily their fathers.

The Perfect Churchian Boyfriend (Source)

Unmasking Feminism – Disclaimers for Christian Men Considering Marriage (it seems we can add David Platt and Matt Chandler to the list of pastors who want men to man-up and marry the sluts)

I say all this not to be a downer and to sway men from marriage, but so they can make an informed decision. Wives are not always sunshine and lollipops. The modern Christian message is to just man-up and marry any Christian looking woman and instantly your life will be transformed into this Garden of Eden haven. Don’t be fooled. There will be no heaven on earth.

The Return Of Kings – The Men’s Right Movement is No Place For Men

Deep down, MRAs believe not only that men are victims, but that men can only advocate for their rights insofar as they are victims. Victimhood grants legitimacy. Plight makes right. Look at the issues dearest to MRAs, and you’ll find that stories of male victimhood dominate their discussions.

Donal Graeme – Church Shopping and the Race To The Bottom

So what is the moral of the story? Simple: the ability of “Christians” to church shop creates a natural pressure amongst churches to race to the bottom, to the lowest common denominator, and adopt beliefs which don’t conflict with the worldly views of members or potential members.

Unmasking Feminism – Refined and Dirt Bags

Note how there is nothing YOU-ish about the men’s group. It’s NOT about YOU, but about what you do as a husband, father, and citizen. Your utility is prized above all else.

Should Men Be Shamed Into Marrying?

According to this pastor, Paul was a self-centered failure who needed to grow up, man up and get married so he could serve God instead of being an irresponsible, messy, immature loser. Paul needed a godly wife to civilize him, but he failed in life because he stayed single and immature. This view is probably the majority view in churches today, and it probably explains why men can’t be bothered with church.

Ten Commandments of MGTOW – enough said.

SunshineMary and the Dragon commenter Frank on The relative freedom a husband has.

I look at that and wonder if it’s even possible to maintain the autonomy of being a free man within the confines of a marriage. All the sex in the world can’t make up for liberty.

Women Changed The Rules, Not Men

It really is something when you hear women complaining about how hard they have it given they brought most of these troubles upon themselves.

Single Blokes Are Better Off Staying Single

Apparently his wife is a very sweet person; but she also owns his ass. It gets to the point where I mock him to his face about how his wife is in charge of his life, and he is so sackless that he simply laughs along, even though I can see quite clearly that the jokes sting whatever pride he has left.

The Easiest Way To Overcome A Depression

But, what is important to realize is that being depressed isn’t itself important. What is truly important is to understand your own emotional self, and to try and understand what it is that makes you depressed so you can avoid it.

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Until next time. I leave you with Dan The Man Stage 1 (very good) stuff.

Responsibilities Don’t Exist

Free Northerner had a response for one of my little blog thoughts involving some reading, which in these posts are meant to be backed up in the material presented in the links.

While he agreed with me in complete principle, he went to the typical tradcon feminist line that “rights don’t exist”. Now I thank him for a “respectful response”. While he will see my response to what he wrote within this post, I would like to point out that this is not wholly the response, but his response happened to be a perfect take-off for a post I was planning beforehand (the opposition of rights and equality for men), the content of which you see here.

Rights are exhibited in the form of laws, and God has His own laws. “Right to life” – “thou shalt not kill”. “Right to private property” – “thou shalt not steal” and the like. Those that go around claiming “rights don’t exist” will at the same time cry about their rights or the rights of others when the government comes to take their guns, or someone robs their home, or even claim a “right to life” when it comes to the issue of abortion. They reveal their own biases in this claim that rights don’t exist.

These are God-given rights by virtue of the fact that He specified these limits. We should not confuse the sovereignty of God over what He has created (addressing 2 Thess 3:10-12, and the Jesus decision), and should not confuse the fact that rights can be taken by other just men acting in God’s will and God Himself for various reasons. Taking the rights of others outside of this should result in proper justice to be done if mercy is not taken by the wronged. God even supports this in the laws to His people and the expectation He has in enforcing such laws.

This leads into responsibilities undertaken willingly, which addresses Col 3:22 and Matt 16:24-27. People can willfully trade responsibility for responsibility. This is not a proof that rights don’t exist, but that people have the right to negotiate an exchange of goods and services. It, however, is a proof that responsibilities come from rights and not the other way around. Undertaking all things have a cost, and even Jesus warned of counting costs in such things. The misapplication of these Scriptures involve the fact that a choice was made to undertake a vow. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. This is not a proof that rights don’t exist.

Christ does not bid anyone come by force. This is obligation. The nature of men is to turn something that should be out of love into a forced obligation and something that should be given out of grace into an entitlement. This is the state of traditional Christian marriage (Marriage 2.0) and has been for about 1000 years.

This brings us back to the silly and absurd statement that “rights don’t exist”. When this is said in the context of the manosphere, it usually meant to mean “Rights Don’t Exist for Men.” In traditional practice, this is a true statement. This is readily seen by the practice of chivalry, which takes all rights away from men and all responsibilities away from women. This is akin to the statement that “Responsibilities Don’t Exist For Women”. Feminism (both tradcon feminism and marxist feminism) of all stripes has taken rights away from men and responsibilities away from women. Free Northerner’s mistake is not carrying out his very true statement into the rest of his work:

The delinking of the rights and responsibilities is one of the largest causes of societal dysfunction. From it flows the entitlement society.

The statement that there is no discussion of rights without responsibilities would be great in a sane world, but we live in an insane world vis-a-vis men and women and must formulate our actions based on reality and not hopes and dreams. Much of that world has been created over the last millennium by the traditionalist Christians in instituting chivalry. Chivalry creates an obligation (or unchosen responsibility) upon all men by birth.

In that sense, it’s true that responsibilities don’t exist for anyone.

Women don’t carry responsibility for anything, as evidenced by the female infantilization inherent to chivalry.

Men carry obligations from birth in the terms of traditional Christianity as penance for being born with “the demon rod” as Augustine puts it. As he viewed it, “the cause and effect of original sin is lust, the symptom and disease is the erection, and semen is the agent transmitting this sin to the next generation.” In this sense, one-sided obligations out of hatred of men are placed upon men. To say it another way, men must continually pay penance from birth for the sin of being born a man by being involuntarily enslaved to all women. This is the hatred of men and female-supremacism (i.e. feminism) that is inherent in traditional Christians and why they support Marriage 2.0 wholeheartedly.

This also explains the special hostility that MGTOW gets, since they have chosen to not value their own lives in the frame of women. Marriage 2.0 is a raw deal, which is why the men who have rebelled against this arrangement aren’t undertaking it. They have stopped acknowledging their sinhood for being born men and start seeing marriage not as an obligation of slavery but as an exchange. This is why I speak in terms of exchange in several places when it comes to marriage. I hold enough value and self-worth in my own life that I do not choose to enslave myself to be the footstool of a woman – the value provided by the woman does not match what I would have to give up.

It’s been noted in several places (examples to come in my link farm tomorrow) that there’s been a degree of TradCon Tourettes (and agreement with the Marxist Feminists) in the opposition to equality or the idea that men have rights. That they sound suspiciously similar for a reason – their beliefs on marriage are one in the same. This leads to commenter Rexoffender’s response:

Feminists love rights without responsibilities. Solid example that I’m not exactly shocked wasn’t brought up by anybody during the debate on women in combat roles is why no women have asked to be included in Selective Service. At its core, feminism IS rights without responsibilities. They want the right to an abortion, not the responsibility of providing for a family. They want the right to equal pay, not the responsibility of equal work. They want the RIGHT to go to war, not the RESPONSIBILITY of the draft. The decoupling of the rights and responsibilities is central to almost all of the social madness in America. Feminists are just a loud example.

This leads back into Antz’ comment (which I thank Free Northerner for preserving all the links):

Regardless of how each of us evaluates the intrinsic fairness (or lack thereof) of the traditional marriage contract, it is important to stress that the traditional marriage contract is gone forever. Any man who enters into a traditional marriage permanently indentures himself as a servant of a woman who can rip up her part of the contract at will, with no consequences.

From the moment that a man signs on the dotted line, his freedom, his property, his life, and his children permanently belong to HER.

The modern version of the traditional marriage is the ultimate embodiment of modern feminism:
* Rights without responsibilities for women
* Responsibilities without rights for men

And into the other link, which illustrates the hatred of men within traditionalist circles:

She unilaterally divorces you? Too bad, rights don’t exist.
She falsely accuses you of domestic violence? Too bad, rights don’t exist.
She bears false witness against you in any other way? Too bad, rights don’t exist.
She makes sure you never see your children ever again? Too bad, they’re hers! rights don’t exist.
She cuckolds you? Too bad, rights don’t exist! Man up and pay for the child!
She commits adultery against you? Too bad, rights don’t exist! Besides you caused it!
She divorce rapes you and takes away your livelihood? Too bad, rights don’t exist.

Too bad the traditionalists won’t extend this way of thought into other realms…or into women, and see their female-supremacist bias for what it is. Women have all the rights in the world. Men? Just the obligation to pay penance as a slave for the rest of his life for his sin of being born with the demon rod. Granted, when traditionalists speak against rights and equality they might be responding to the liberal Marxist concept of “rights” meaning outcome and not opportunity as myself and the MRA movement means it. But it still amounts to opposition against and hatred of men. Being Anti-man is being Anti-Christ. As I think on it, it’s probably sensible that man would be persecuted for being in the physical image of Christ – after all, Christ came as a man.

Ordinarily, in any other case outside of gender relations, I’d agree with Free Northerner’s post more wholeheartedly. But the original text was about the relationship between men and women and must be dealt with in that light. With the warped and twisted way life is right now, the only proper thing is that any discussion regarding men is out-of-hand if it doesn’t exclusively involve rights. Conversely, any discussion involving women is out-of-hand if it doesn’t exclusively involve responsibilities. As long as the rights/responsibilities pendulum is being held to the side and not allowed to rest at equilibrium, this must be the case.

The Complementarian Contradiction

I usually try not to get too personal, by keeping it to the expression of truth and keeping myself out of the way. But things I’ve recently read makes me to desire to step out this time. In writing this blog, I’ve noticed a couple of dynamics:

1. Most of the men who are aware of what feminism is usually stay away from what I write because I’m a professing follower of Jesus, therefore I must be a tradcon feminist.
2. The ones who are professing “traditionalist” Christians, however, usually stay away because I’ve completely and unequivocally declared myself as anti-feminist. In other words, I’m not a traditionalist (tradcon) feminist.

I don’t know how true that assessment is, but what leads me into what I have to write about today stems from that second statement. As I wrote before, there are two schools of thought that are postulated in current Churchianity when it comes to men and women and their roles in society.

Egalitarianism is the idea that men and women are exactly identical before God in both role and value. This mode of thought was born out of the secular feminist influence within Churchianity. This was addressed in the other post.

Complementarianism is the other mode of thought that is expressed within Churchianity. It’s generally expressed in the idea that men and women are different, have different things to bring to the table, and have different roles. I have brought the Biblical view of this out for husbands and wives before, and it should be clear where my position is on this matter.

However, I did not endorse complementarianism in my other post, for reasons that this post will get into now. The reason is this, as described in the other post: Scripture professes an equality of value between men and women in the sight of Christ Jesus:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

What all too often comes out in the writings of “traditionalist Christians” is that men were not created by God for the purposes of His glory, but were created for the purposes of woman’s glory. That is, the only value that men hold in “traditionalist Christian” circles is directly related to his utility to the woman. In other words, their view is that the only value men hold in society is in their service to women, and any man that is not under the personal rule of a woman is seen as dangerous.

This view comes out in the expression of men only in terms of husbands and fathers. This view comes out in the man-up rants. This view comes out in the non-Biblical support of chivalry, where a man’s sole and only purpose in life is to the service of women even to the cost of his own life (and if that isn’t proof that a woman’s life is valued more highly than a man’s, I don’t know what is). This even comes out in treating every woman as her own god, treating every word out of her mouth and every feeling she has as if they came from the Lord God Himself.

This inequality of value or worth of the existence of men and women comes out with tradcon feminists, especially when assessments of the rights of men or the MRA/MRM comes out. In reading the latest examples of tradcon feminism I’ve encountered, Sis writes (wb, btw), in her assessment of men in self-identifying as a traditionalist feminist:

I love men, they are awesome warriors, intimidating captains, fearless leaders, amazing lovers. I believe in chivalry, men are at their finest when their purpose is something bigger than maximizing their wealth and prosperity. I think women are at their finest when they are creating beauty and admiring the men around them. Women are designed to nurture, care and be patient with children and men. Men are designed to be strong and conquer the world. I don’t believe in equal rights for men and women, I don’t think women should be drafted just like men because we serve a greater purpose at home.

She is welcome to clarify, but note that she describes men only in terms that befit their utility to women or others, and also denies that men should have the same rights as women in society. Commenter Robyn in the same thread writes:

I’ve thought long and hard (and for many years) about this statement: “I don’t believe in equal rights for men and women …” -and I believe I finally have my head around it! It’s not that men and women are NOT equal – it’s that ‘equality’ shouldn’t come into the comparison.

Dipping into the numerous threads that now exist on chivalry in different places will produce a number of similar comments painting the life, liberty, and dignity of men to be lesser than women, insignificant, or even worthless compared to women. As well, it is not hard to find other expressions of such views. This is not the Biblical roles of men and women being expressed, this is tradcon feminism being expressed by “professing Christians”.

What do they get wrong when it comes to men and the call for equal rights? Egalitarianists confuse the God-given role women have as a lack of diminished value of life before God. Complementarians see the God-given roles men and women have, but have a lack of diminished value of men in the sight of God. Traditional feminism has lasted much longer than the secular variety, so they are evidently blind to it. The ham-handed handling of some parties to slide a H into the MRA acronym is an attempt to illustrate the nature of this problem: Men do not have the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as women do today.

The chart summarizes the arguments above. God-given rights are those things which moved the signatories of the Declaration of Independence to action, and include all things they saw essential to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. God-given attributes are the genuine (not tradfem defined) qualities that makes a man what he is, along with the proper roles that God expects man to play both in society and in His Church.

(Note: Tradcon feminists acceptance of “masculinity” as a God-given attribute is defined as it being such to serve women. Hence, the very essence of “masculinity” is defined by women to be of utility to women. This is unacceptable.)

The problem that any form of mens rights advocacy addresses isn’t that they are wanting man to have equivalent roles to women – in other words, MRAs have little to no concern with the last column. Personally, as a Christian, as long as the roles and attributes are proper, I have no concern with the last column. It is fully concerned with the second column, and that’s where my concern lies with this form of feminism. Feminism in all its forms have determined to erode and destroy what is proper in both columns.

Feminism doesn’t solely concern itself with Biblical roles in marriage. It has concerned itself with devaluing men in society. It has concerned itself with either the subjugation of men both legally and within the Church (via Marriage 2.0 and other methods) or the elimination of men in society. This goes not only for the secular variety, but the religious one as well.

The idea of complementarianism as expressed sounds like a good one when it comes to Biblical roles, but it’s all too often a cover for a complementarian view of the value of life of men and women. Women are the valuable ones, while the only value for men is to compliment women as their servants. This is as much feminism as the other kind of feminism. This is as much misandry, as the other kind of misandry. Feminism is feminism, no matter what appearance it takes.