Society lies to men in so many small ways.
“Just be yourself, “her past doesn’t matter”, “you get out what you put in" - just to name a few.
But what about the big lies? What about the biggest lie ever told?
“Women are oppressed by men”
— one of the most insidious, divisive, toxic ideas to ever be elevated to a level of dogma by Western Civilization: the idea than women are now, and have always been getting the short end of the straw when it comes to gender relations.
The Background:
The genders, in the infancy of mankind, would have lived together under a sort of tacit agreement. It went something like this, and pretty much still does: the men would fight and die to protect the women of the tribe, they would hunt large, dangerous beasts to provide the tribe protein, and they would man the perimeter against the horrors of the outside world. And, in return for all of this protection, the women would defer to the men, support the men, and submit to the men’s leadership of the tribe.
Most primates still live in this sort of dichotomy, though feminists love to throw out the matriarchal bonobo chimp as a counter example, one of the few exceptions in nature. They routinely forget to mention that the Bonobo developed in relative safety and isolation due to the formation of the Congo river (which could not be crossed by other, more aggressive primates), and are seriously close to extinction due to their timidity, inability to deal with or adapt to external threats, and their penchant for eating honey and laying around blowing each other all day. Not that bad of a life— but hey, if you are reading this on a computer then it should be obvious who won the evolutionary potato sack race.
But let’s be fair. Primitive life like this was shitty for the women, who were objectified in their role as a precious and controlled object, sort of locked away in a drawer as one might do with an expensive and delicate piece of jewelry to protect it from thievery. Because they were so physically weak and vulnerable, while at the same time being so biologically valuable, women during these brutal times would have had a lot less freedom and control over their lives, as such was the cost of security in a hostile world. You were either inside the perimeter, controlled but safe, or free on the outside and shortly doomed to succumb to the dangers of an animal existence.
You can trace this whole attitude down the line and use it to counter nearly every feminist argument for oppression. What’s that? Women couldn’t vote a while back? Are you aware that a willingness to die for your country, and often actual military service, has almost always been a requirement to be a citizen and earn a vote throughout most of the history of democracy? Just like the cavemen who had to throw themselves in front of danger in exchange for authority.....Starting to see a pattern?
I still, in 2016 America, have to sign up for the draft or I am a FELON. Felons can’t vote last I checked. Why didn’t the suffragettes first picket to join the draft then? You know, to take the responsibility ahead of the privilege. Instead of vice versa? Why, it is almost as if they have gotten to cherry pick nice things while rejecting the unpleasant or distasteful realities of life!
Point is: the system of gendered responsibility we’ve long functioned under as a species is sub-par for both sexes, but because we’ve often inhabited a violent and sub-par world, such arrangements were and still are at times a necessary evil.
The Lie:
We’ve come a long way since then, and because the places and situations where brutality and danger await have grown more abstract and further away, most of us never come into contact with that real, gut-wrenching fear for our lives—that situation in which we would give up everything, all control for a few barrel-chested, never-crying men standing sentinel at the mouth of our caves. But these men are still there— overseeing a staggeringly complex system of checks and balances backed up by the implied might of a male-powered army. Most of us living in first-world cities are so far removed from the reality of this that we don’t even need to consider it. It isn’t part of our lives and so we simply pretend it doesn’t exist.
We have the luxury to ignore the male contribution to the scales of gendered sacrifice, and the myth of female oppression and male privilege is the nasty result of our spoiled and coddled blindness.
Women have traditionally put up with being controlled because they relied on men for survival, and men have fought, died, built, and created because those activities were necessary to protect, shelter, and insulate the people that they relied on for the continuation of life itself: namely, the women and children.
The Red Pill Solution:
The point of this all is to tell the men out there that they have no reason to feel guilty for being men. It doesn’t seem like a revolutionary thought, but men as a gender have a greater need than ever to internalize these positive messages. Masculinity is not toxic. You are not privileged for being born with a penis. Your masculinity is not fragile. There is no “patriarchy” which promotes you at the expense of women. You are not creepy or shallow for being attracted to young, feminine, thin women. You are not part of the “rape culture” because you attempt to chat up a pretty woman on the subway. It is not “catcalling” to say hello to a woman on the street. You are not an oppressor who needs to make amends for some horrid set of past aggressions. You are allowed to be dominant, confident, and assertive as you are naturally geared towards behaving. Ignore the dumb sitcom husbands with the too-good-for-him wives. Ignore the people who try to write-off your success as something handed to you by your genitals.
TL/DR:
Some people expect you to apologize for who you are based on lies about the past and present; these people are simply probing you for weakness. Don't give them the satisfaction. Be a man, and be proud of it.
Book and Blog. Thanks again TRP
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