A reader’s testimony about how Respect for Respectability can transform lives!

Readership: All
Theme: Masculine Authority and Responsibility
Length: 1,200 words
Reading Time: 7 minutes

This post conveys an email correspondence I had with a female reader named Juliana on 2022/4/28-29. I’m passing this on to our readers because I believe men will be encouraged to make a greater effort to respect the right kinds of men when they know what kind of impact it can have.

Jack,

I’m a long-term reader of your blog, but will refrain from commenting in the combox since I’m a woman. However, the last paragraph of your recent post about men choosing to respect the right sort of men brought a post of Zippy Catholic’s to my memory. I thought at the time it was a shame that his idea was mostly dismissed.

I’m sending the pertinent paragraph, but the whole post and comments are worth reading.

“So why do modern women find themselves, often against their own will, attracted to bad boys? Simple, really. Female attraction is much more socially conditioned than male attraction: women are natural followers, men natural leaders. Women are very good at figuring out the difference between the appearance of social status and its reality. You can’t snooker them – they can’t snooker themselves – by putting a nerd in a position of power. A nerd in an artificial position of power is still a nerd, and most women are going to find powerful nerds about as attractive as most men are going to find an obese woman in a bikini. Young women are always going to find themselves unwittingly attracted to men who have actual social status as accorded by our actual society, those who are seen as independent and “cool” in context (which is not the same thing as money, position, etc.); just as men are always going to find themselves attracted to women who have physical characteristics that make for good childbearing.”

Zippy Catholic: “Game” as postmodern feminism; or why women like bad boys (2012-9-17)

May God bless your day,

Juliana

img-1783683714-6a50da82806264.57033360.jpg

Juliana,

Thank you for calling my attention to this older post from Zippy. It kick started a fruitful study of the old Game Debate, among other things.

Could you tell me what it is about this post that led you to share it with me? What does it mean to you? How do you think this relates to men choosing to respect the right sort of men?

Blessings to you too!

Jack

Jack,

My sister and I married 38 years ago in a church in which fathers were expressly respected and those fathers extended respect to single men who followed Christ. Fathers were expected to be part of the mate selection process for daughters, and all of the church leadership threw their weight behind fathers. My mother talked frankly to us about women being attracted to bad boys and taught us to disrespect such men and respect good ones. I doubt this teaching would have taken in the absence of the social norms in our church and, in fact, in our prior church my dad was not respected by either my mother or the other men, and I also lacked respect for him. Once we changed churches and I saw him respected by other men, my respect for him improved. This church was not at all Anabaptist/Separatist — it was solidly evangelical in character, but the families were on the cutting edge of the early evangelical rejection of popular culture with most of the families rejecting birth control and homeschooling their children.

Zippy’s view on female attraction being socially mediated rang true to me because of my experience in resisting my attraction to bad boys. I was definitely attracted to them, but purposely chose a man who was not rebellious and then my dad affirmed my choice. My sister did the same. I don’t believe I would have done this if the men in my social group did not demonstrate respect for good men and disrespect for bad and if my mother had not specifically brought this to my attention.

img-1783679348-6a50c97497d664.60298951.jpgScene from Four Brothers (2005).

My husband and I have a son and three daughters and while we did not follow the same practices, the two girls that are married did seek his input and chose good family men. All were virgins, the men because they weren’t the sort of men that women currently chase. I followed my mother’s practices and explicitly taught my daughters why bad boys are attractive and why they should resist that attraction and train their attraction to good men. My youngest daughter has so far chosen three good men, two of whom declined her interest and remain unmarried, one of whom declined and is soon to be married to a woman who will likely make his life hell.

I may be on the entirely wrong track, but if the way forward is enclaves of like-minded families, male respect for other men will be essential to that project. In my previous church, Jason [LastMod] would have been married — he is just the sort of man fathers wanted for their daughters and, as such, he would have enjoyed the respect of those fathers. Also, if Zippy is correct and my story has any validity, attraction is trained. While visceral attraction only may be lots of fun, but I sincerely doubt it survives the intimacies of marriage entirely intact, and it’s simply not practical to expect that every couple will experience that at the beginning. Every long-married couple with an active physical interaction has likely practiced cultivated attraction. Cultivated attraction quite often leads to visceral attraction anyway.

When our youngest daughter was in her early teens we were in a church that tried to practice a courtship model, but the fathers scoffed and preened around the young men who had great potential as husbands and fathers and their daughters did the same. Imagine what could have happened if the fathers respected and mentored those boys and disrespected the bad ones? Didn’t there used to be a sort of Masculine Respect Club that men were automatically in as long as they were decent upstanding citizens?

Thank you most sincerely for your interest and for your time and patience with this long story.

Juliana

img-1783682496-6a50d5c09b1307.90565312.png

Conclusions

Juliana has given us a vision of a respectful community of men and how this type of environment has a positive impact that extends over generations.

The takeaway for men is that we need to do what we can to foster a respectful church / community / family / social environment having hallmarks similar to what she has described — one that is characterized by a mutual respect for men, a respect for the right kinds of men, and teaching women by example to do the same.

We should also discourage honor and respect from being shown to those types of men who are prone to only garner respect according to those worldly standards which are contradictory and stand in stark contrast to God’s ordained order, and explain to women that this is an inclination of the flesh and how it is detrimental.

Related