By Maximus
First, I want to say thank you to all the writers, readers and commenters for making The Spearhead something truly unique in the male blog-o-sphere. The past few weeks have seen a firestorm of incredible articles and, more importantly, incredible comments. It truly is inspiring and I commend Bill for opening the forum up to more writers and opposing points of view. The blade of one’s spear is only sharp from the whetstone that it grinds against.
In this piece, I wish to provide a counterpoint to Paul Elam’s essay on men simply shrugging misandry in our society, to just ignore it, and allow the subsequent indifference that men adopt toward women and the feminist state to bring down the system over time as it naturally will (i.e. social physics). In short, that the men’s movement does not need leaders or leadership.
I would like to begin this piece by stating exactly where I agree completely with Paul.
First – shrugging off misandry is correct. Until men learn to just not care anymore what women think, nothing will change. A level of indifference does need to be inculcated and ingrained into men today toward what women attempt to shame us into doing for them that goes entirely against our own best interests as well as that of society’s.
Second – I also agree that a certain amount of what the men’s movement has become is simply a repository of personal experience and knowledge about what men face today. That in men finding places on the internet like The Spearhead and A Voice For Men, they are simply discovering in many ways something they already knew but could not put their finger on it – the current state of gender relations sucks! This is the educational and wake up phase of any mass social movement and it is vitally important.
Where I disagree with Paul is in the following.
First – the problem with leaving the movement at just that, shrugging misandry and ignoring women, is that the abandonment of masculine ideals and principles that got us into this mess in the first place will still remain abandoned. As much as men here would like to wish they can just ignore women and go their own way, they can’t. We like the ladies and we like them a lot! To deny this is to deny our very nature as men. The marriage strike, “game”, ignoring misandry, etc are all well and good, but it does not fix the problem, it only administers a temporary alleviation of painful symptoms of disease.
Second – the false assertion that the men’s movement does not need leaders derives directly from my first point. Where is society once men walk away from women and the feminist state? Ignoring misandry and women will only take us so far, to the point of collapsing the system. What happens after that? If feminism has succeed in the spectacular way it has, it is because men have abandoned their traditional role of leadership in women’s lives and in society’s. This is precisely the crisis the male youth of today are suffering from and why they are crying out for leadership.
To lead is to be masculine.
To be a leader is to be a man.
To be a father is to accept the responsibility of leading your family in its values, ethics and behavioural norms within the community you are a part of.
You can’t say you wish to wake men up from the feminist dystopian state which they are slaves to by asking them to walk away and then simply tell them… that’s it. Go your own way. Ignore women. Don’t marry. Sex can be had with good “game.” I have no advice or guidance for you on how to live your life as a man now that you are free or how to go about righting the problems that caused you to walk away from women and society in the first place.
Without leadership, you have anarchy and that is precisely what the feminist state is creating and perpetuating – the crushing of masculine men and their roles as leaders in making society a loving, just, peaceful, free and respectful place to live, work and play.
Far from leaders and leadership not being necessary, I think they are vital to the men’s movement at this point in time.
I have great respect for Paul Elam and the leadership role he has taken at A Voice for Men, though he wishes to deny and reject it. Any commenter here will agree with me I am sure, Paul is a leader in this movement whether he wants the job or not. I have learned a great deal from him and do consider him a leader in the men’s movement. So to do I Bill and The Spearhead. I just can’t understand why Paul does not see leadership, and the development of leaders in the men’s movement, as important. As I have shown, I believe I understand his argument against it, but it has not convinced me.
This, my first article for The Spearhead, was brought about initially by Christopher Quinn’s earlier article on the men’s movement needing leadership. The subsequent debate over leaders and leadership is one of great fear and trepidation for most men I think. It requires that a man bring out the fullest expression of his masculine talents and put them on display and judgement in front of other men. Leadership engenders the kind of genetic, evolutionary terror in a man’s heart through female scrutiny that no sexual rejection can ever come close to matching.
To illustrate this point, I pose the following questions to the readers here?
Why are we afraid to discuss leadership?
Why do we avoid discussion of and agreement upon a vision for what being a man is in the 21st century and beyond?
Why do we not have more articles on what we believe it is to be masculine?
Why is the natural desire for a leader to emerge in the men’s movement such a hot topic?
Most importantly, why does there seem to be an agreed consensus here (as far as I can tell so far) that the men’s movement does not need leaders or leadership?
I say it is because these questions are the most difficult a man has to answer for himself in his life, and therefore the questions most avoided, because the answers are most certainly not politically correct and will require of a man a level of courage, determination and self-discovery that most men do not wish to subject themselves to. Despite the desire to rid society of the feminist nightmare, I have yet to read anything anywhere that gives me a vision or belief system of what should replace it? Man, society, cannot function in a vacuum, and without leaders and leadership, a vacuum of even greater chaos is exactly what we will be left with once the feminist system collapses – it will be every man, woman and child for himself. A vacuum of leadership is what Thomas Hobbes feared the most, what Machiavelli wished to advise safeguarding against.
To revisit Christopher Quinn’s article, Spartacus was simply one leader among 70,000 men who stood up to the Roman Empire and said enough was enough. Make no mistake – every man in Spartacus’ army was a leader in his own way, each and every one of them, whether they were at the head of the attack or defending the rear. Spartacus just happened to be the one man that all the other men felt best exemplified and gave voice to their collective cause, so they followed him and pushed him to the fore, that is all. A leader cannot have followers unless what he believes, the men believe as well. That means that every follower has the potential to be a leader, but only one will have the courage and commitment to the cause to step up to the plate and risk taking a spear or sword on the front lines of battle in committing himself to turning the beliefs he has, as well as the men that follow him, into reality.
Spartacus was not a failure for leading his men to their deaths. Those men all choose to follow him and to die for a cause they all believed in. Such is the price of leadership. Such is the sacrifice to to what one believes in. Such is the fate for those that try to change the status quo. Accept it, or go home.
With great respect to Paul, I am here to state unequivocally – Christopher is right.
The men’s movement does need leadership.
That leader is you.
You… the one reading this article, visiting A Voice for Men and The Spearhead daily, commenting and contributing to the discussions. In many ways, all of us are already becoming leaders for this movement in the same way the fellow gladiators in Spartacus’ army became leaders in their own way. In time, a few men will emerge at the top and perhaps one will come to the fore to embody and carry forth all the work of the men’s movement of the past years into the mainstream. If we keep waiting for a leader, it will never happen. That is why it has to be you, all of us here, to make the commitment to become the leaders for this men’s movement that other men will look to for guidance in becoming leaders themselves.
I believe that simply ignoring misandry and letting the feminist beast die a slow death is choosing the safe path. It would have been safer for Spartacus to simply take his men and flee to their freedom – just ignore the Romans and be rid of their empire in a far off land Roman rule had not yet infected with tyranny and slavery (i.e. the recommendation to not marry western women and look for a foreign girl not drunk on feminist kool-aid). In fact, that would have been the smart move. But he did not. Why not? Why is Spartacus seen as a leader? I think it is because he did not choose the smart path, the easy path. Spartacus choose the hard path, the right path, the just path, the only path that a true leader will choose. Without Spartacus, their would be no story for men to recite about the courage of one man leading many others in a fight against oppression and tyranny to overthrow slavery – the very reason Christopher looked to Spartacus for inspiration for his article.
I can give you another example. Why do you think the movie 300 was such a hit? Leonidas should have made the smart choice and worked out a deal with the Persians for Sparta, but he did not. He too realized the short term thinking and affect that that kind of choice would have on his country, his wife, his children. In fact, he was so far sighted, he was more concerned about the families of his fellow Spartans and the future of Spartan culture and society than his own reign as king. If Leonidas had simply cut a deal with the Persians, he and his family would have been just fine under the thumb of Persian rule as war lord of all Greece. But Leonidas knew that choice was wrong. The long term future of Spartan society under Persian rule was not something he was willing to just ignore and walk away from. Playing it safe, going his own way and simply letting the Persian empire expire in time as it would under the gravity of natural social/political forces was not the choice he made as leader. With the death of Leonidas and his 300, we have a 21st century movie blockbuster – a leadership story that is still told almost 2500 years later about free men choosing to die to remain free. Leonidas choose the hard path and set the example for others to follow. That is really what Christopher was asking for in his article about leadership for the men’s movement. He was not looking for a leader per se, he was asking all of us to take a larger leadership role in this movement in our own lives and do as both Spartacus and Leonidas did… consider the long term, the bigger picture, what they ultimately wanted for the future of their families and society, not just the present.
We have reached a point in the build-up of the men’s movement over the past ten and more years of blogging and forums where the time to go mainstream has come. You can feel it. The comments are filled with such sentiments. Staying in the shadows, out of sight, ignoring the feminist hydra and simply shrugging of misandry was the correct path to choose for the incubation of this movement. Now, we need to do more. We need to make the kind of bold choices that Spartacus and Leonidas made in order to make a point. Yes, that might mean some personal sacrifices on our part. No one said overturning 50 years of entrenched feminism was going to be easy. The time to come out of the shadows is now. The time for leaders to start emerging is now. This is what I believe Christopher was calling for in his article.
The one thing that encourages me the most with all the great commenting on The Spearhead is that what we are doing here is exactly what needs to be done right now. We are creating the leaders that this movement needs. Every day. With every article written and commented on. With every new subscriber. There is no hurry. No Spartacus need come to our rescue, as Paul correctly pointed out, men are already rescuing themselves. In time, a Spartacus will appear. As cliche as that sounds, it is the truth.
It is not a matter of if… but when… the men’s movement becomes mainstream.
It is not a matter of who… but how many… men will come forward to lead this movement out of the shadows and into the general consciousness of mainstream society.
We don’t need a leader to take this movement mainstream.
We are the leaders of this mainstream movement.
As Paul pointed out, all of our writings and musing here are nothing more than the outgrowth of what is already present in the collective consciousness of many men. This movement will go mainstream in a heartbeat the second men decide to make it so. That is what men do when they move en-masse, that is why women envy us. It may take us longer to get together and figure things out, for we are not as social as women are and our inherent need for independence and to lead our own lives free from the influence of others inhibits us from naturally co-operating with one another, but when we do… the women know the result. Whatever men decide, the ladies are going to have to live with it because there will be no more debate or discussion. The decision will be final.
It starts with each individual man in taking a stand for what he believes.
It starts with taking a leadership role.
To this end, I have supplied the below excellent books as required reading for men who wish to learn more about leadership and leading their own lives, as well as their wives, children and society, into the future.
Integrity: the courage to meet the demands of reality
Questions of Character: illuminating the heart of leadership through literature
