When was the last time you heard a feminist defend masculinity? It\u2019s a \u201cman bites dog\u201d story.<\/p>\n
You probably won\u2019t see her on Fox News. And she doesn\u2019t have a column in National Review. But a lesbian academic trained at Yale, Camille Paglia, who describes herself as a \u201cnotorious Amazon feminist,\u201d is an unlikely prophet of cultural doom. And maybe that\u2019s why we should listen to what she has to say.<\/p>\n
In a wide-ranging interview in the Wall Street Journal, Paglia says most feminists today deny the basic differences between the sexes, and as a consequence are setting us up for a huge fall. \u201cWhat you\u2019re seeing is how a civilization commits suicide,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
How? Well, Paglia says, many members of the cultural elite have no experience in the military and in fact disdain military service, a traditionally male province. \u201cThese people don\u2019t think in military ways,\u201d Paglia says, \u201cso there\u2019s this illusion out there that people are basically nice, people are basically kind … They literally don\u2019t have any sense of evil or criminality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Friends, as our friend Chuck Colson would say, this isn\u2019t primarily a knowledge problem. It\u2019s a worldview problem. Paglia says modern feminists pass that misunderstanding onto the rest of us at the earliest opportunity \u2014 in kindergarten.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrimary-school education is a crock, basically,\u201d Paglia warns. \u201cThey\u2019re making a toxic environment for boys. Primary education does everything in its power to turn boys into neuters.\u201d As the Journal article relates, \u201cshe sees the tacit elevation of \u2018female values\u2019 \u2014 such as sensitivity, socialization and cooperation \u2014 as the main aim of teachers, rather than fostering creative energy and teaching hard geographical and historical facts.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the same thing happens, she says, all the way to college. \u201cThe PC gender politics things,\u201d Paglia says, \u201cthe way gender is being taught in the universities … is all about neutralization of maleness.\u201d Another prominent feminist, Christina Hoff Sommers, who first alerted us to the ongoing \u201cwar against boys\u201d in the culture, agrees, saying, \u201cBoys are languishing academically, while girls are soaring.\u201d<\/p>\n
Male neutralization, Paglia says, includes the idea that men and women are biologically the same and that gender is nothing but a social construct. And this is why we shouldn\u2019t be surprised that California schools have started to allow kindergartners with supposed \u201cgender identity\u201d issues to go to whichever bathroom they choose.<\/p>\n
Paglia warns us that men have \u201cno models of manhood\u201d in our culture, adding: \u201cMasculinity is just becoming something that is imitated from the movies. There\u2019s nothing left. There\u2019s no room for anything manly right now.\u201d The culture, this feminist admits, needs men and it will die without them. Wow.<\/p>\n
So what to do about it? Paglia suggests a \u201crevalorization\u201d of traditionally masculine trades, such as construction, electrical, and plumbing work, which pay well enough but don\u2019t come with the PC cache of a college degree. Well, that\u2019s a start, but what I\u2019d really like to see is a \u201crevalorization\u201d of traditionally masculine virtues.<\/p>\n
We have too many guys, even in the church, afraid to be men. We need men not afraid to be strong risk-takers, to be courageous, to take responsibility, who are self-controlled, gentle leaders and willing providers. We need these real men in our homes and the public square, in churches and in neighborhoods. Remember, God made us male and female. We need both.<\/p>\n
Now I realize I may be walking on thin ice here, because virtue is not gender specific. Women can also be strong! I pray my own daughters will be bold risk-takers for the kingdom \u2014 but as women, not as men.<\/p>\n
Come to BreakPoint.org for some strong Christian resources and good reads on masculinity, what it means to be a man \u2014 for men and for boys … because we need strong women and strong men. In fact, Western civilization depends upon it. Just ask Camille Paglia.<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Copyright (c) 2014 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. “BreakPoint” is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When was the last time you heard a feminist defend masculinity? It\u2019s a \u201cman bites dog\u201d story. You probably won\u2019t see her on Fox News. And she doesn\u2019t have a column in National Review. But a lesbian academic trained at Yale, Camille Paglia, who describes herself as a \u201cnotorious Amazon feminist,\u201d is an unlikely prophet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[239,1306,1308],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6080"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}