I've moved — check out my new blog at cassyfiano.com!

Redirecting in 10 seconds...

Friday, May 2, 2008

Women: are you worthy of a real man?

My post yesterday about how men need to man up ruffled a lot of feathers -- as I knew it would. But it wasn't the whiny liberals complaining this time around. Here, at Wizbang, and on Melissa's blog, the same theme was repeated over and over again: what are women doing to deserve real men?

And you know, it's a good question. Right now, for most women, the answer would be NOTHING.

As much as men may be missing out on what it means to be a real man, women have this problem a hundredfold worse. The state of women today is alarming, and a significant portion of the blame can be laid at the feet of modern feminism. Many women are walking stereotypes and hypocrites. They want a real man, a strong man, to take care of them -- but if he does, he's holding her down. They want to be strong, successful, and as respected in the boardroom as the male CEOs are -- yet they want special treatment to get there. They want to be lauded for their ability to birth children and for their mothering instincts -- but they don't want to be tied down at home, doing "all the work". They want their husband or boyfriend to respect them and make them feel appreciated -- but do nothing to make him feel loved, respected, and appreciated. They talk about being "empowered" -- yet still cry that women are victims.

They're walking, talking contradictions.

Here are some of the comments I got, and Melissa got, on this subject that resonated with me.
anonymous:

Manliness is really the willingness to sacrifice self for the benefit of others, particularly a man's children, wife, family, neighbors and country.

Most young men are willing to die for the respect, admiration and love of a worthy and chaste woman. The problem is that interaction with most women today leads them quickly to the conclusion that few women are worth dying for.

Some will question the need for chastity as a requirement. However, from the male perspective, sex is the greatest compliment that a woman can pay to a man. A woman who sleeps around devalues the compliment.

I am lucky that I found such a woman. As a result, my goals in life in order of priority are fairly simple: (1) provide for my children until they graduate from college, (2) provide for my wife for the rest of her life, (3)provide for myself for the rest of my life, (4) serve my community, and (5) spend as much time with her as I can enjoying life.

MB:

Doctor Melissa, what exactly do you bring to the table as consideration for the man acting according to your precise specifications (and also apparently earning all the money)?

Your vagina?

What if the man doesn't think you're worth it, does he still have to act within your precisely defined parameters?

What a spoiled, entitled brat.

lordsomber:

Re DuToit's rant, I wonder if there's a corresponding rant by a woman criticizing the lack of real women nowadays? Cos as much as guys *do* need to 'man up,' I see plenty of women who need to grow up as well. (Present company excluded, of course.)

Aries:

Gosh, little women really think SHAMING men still works? That stopped a while ago. Scream "Man-Up" from your OWN apartment. Men have seen women in action. Whiners, complainers, misandric and endlessly focused on themselves only. Women threw men away. They're just upset that men realized how much happier they were keeping their pitiful, abusives asses to themselves. Womens Groups lobbied for laws which destroyed the Nuclear Family/Marriage. I'm happy to let women sleep in the bed they made. I'm not lifting a damn finger. Women got us in this mess. When it gets bad enough they'll fight the feminist/the source of their problems. Then MEN will show up, Not before. I'm not fighting battles for women who never cared before. Its the chivalrous nature of men which allowed this to get this far. NO LONGER OUR PROBLEM! Women have built up a lot of contempt in men and they dont know how to put the ink back in the bottle. Oh well!

So SHAME AWAY. We no longer care. Your fault! You fix the problem!!! Men are now HAPPY. We adjust. Wwwhhhiinnnne away!

DJ Drummond:
The real men never left. The women stopped noticing us.

Sean:

What? The bed's been made and now you don't want to sleep in it? Please try to understand. If guys need to "man up", how is that going to happen, because a woman tells them to? T'aint likely. Y'all wanted abortion on demand(kill the children) the pill (sex means nothing) any job a man does (just tweak the standards a little, okay?) sevice acadamies (uh, coporal Sledge raped me) and pretty much anything and everything else. Ok, you got it. Now you want us to act more like men used to, even if it's a whole new ball game. It ain't that men don't want to BE men anymore, it's just that it doesn't MEAN anything anymore, and we just quit giving a shit. And maybe, just maybe, if women didn't behave and look like whores, drink like a Templar, and talk like a sailor, there might be a point to having respect for them. But this is what women wanted, to be more like men, so welcome to club, and when you dilute the standards and race for the bottom, don't be shocked when you wake up in the gutter. I never stopped being a man, and I never needed some woman to tell me how to do it.You got questions? You don't know what happened? You want things to change for the better? Go look in the mirror. I got things to do, I'm a busy man.

I have to say, I wouldn't have looked at the issue this way were it not for comments like these. But every single one of them is exactly right.

While men are more and more emasculated in our society, there's no argument against the fact that it is because of women. Women insisted that men change. Women insisted that they show their emotions more and be less stoic; they insisted that men let themselves be more vulnerable. They try to train boys from infancy to be more feminine so that women can be more masculine.

And now what do we have? "Strong" women with an entitlement attitude and a victim mentality, while men meekly let themselves be walked all over, disrespected, and parodied left and right? Is this how anyone wants it to be?

While men have become emasculated sissy boys, women have become selfish, whiny bitches.

I think anonymous' comment summed it up the best, particularly this part:
Most young men are willing to die for the respect, admiration and love of a worthy and chaste woman. The problem is that interaction with most women today leads them quickly to the conclusion that few women are worth dying for.


So what makes a women worthy of a real man? What does she need to do? I think a large part of the problem deals with the fact that too many women have zero respect and/or appreciation for the men in their lives and the sacrifices that they (the man) are making for them (the woman). How many TV shows today show a smart, strong father figure with a smart, strong wife? When I think of an ideal relationship, that's what I envision. I don't think a real man would ever want some meek, beta female to do everything he wanted. I think he would want a real woman, someone who was his equal, who he could not only love and cherish, but respect and admire.

Anyways, the point was that you can often look to television and pop culture to see what the prevailing attitude of the day is. And too often you see a stupid, lazy husband who's probably not very good-looking and overweight, with a beautiful, brilliant wife who is clearly above him and doesn't appreciate him in the least. He does a lot of smiling meekly and saying, "Yes, dear", while she castigates him in front of her girlfriends.

Why should this guy bother being a better man for her, when she so obviously has no respect for him.

Women today were raised being told that they could have everything. You can have the high-powered career with a six-figure salary, a great husband, two adorable kids, and the house with the white picket fence. No one ever told them that this bears zero resemblance to reality. Therefore, too many women are never satisfied. Nothing their man does is ever good enough; they're never happy in their job; they're always disappointed. They couldn't open their eyes and appreciate what's in front of them if their lives depended on it. Well, that's bad (duh). You couple that with a lack of willingness to make sacrifices (because these kinds of women expect everything handed to them on a silver platter), and you have big trouble.

They expect their man to waste his entire life sacrificing to make her happy, yet she is unwilling to even lift a finger to help, or even acknowledge the sacrifice he's making -- for her. Because in her mind, she deserves all these things anyways, so it's automatically expected. It's not her man going above and beyond to prove his love for her, to provide for her -- it's him doing what's expected of him. The entitlement attitude rears its ugly head, and leaves her disappointed and him bitter.

And then you have to add in the masculinization of women. Feminism seems to view equality as "being exactly like a man". It doesn't allow for the fact that men and women are, indeed, different. So in order for women to be equal, they have to act just like men do -- drink like men, sleep around like men, cuss like men, etc. And while I'm sure it's momentarily thrilling, I somehow doubt that any man wants the drunk chick he saw making out with another girl at a party in the middle of a circle of cheering guys as the mother of his children, as someone he can respect. How is a man supposed to respect a woman who he knows has slept with a hundred different men without blinking an eye? With the advent of abortion on demand, birth control, and feminists cheering slutty behavior on, women have been "liberated" to... sleep around? And this strengthens and empowers women... how?

So what do we have? We have women who expect the world to be given to them, and when it isn't, demand special treatment and affirmative action to get it. They want a man who will do everything she asks of him and more, without ever showing appreciation or gratitude for him. They want to act like men, but be treated like women. They want everything, but are unwilling to do what it takes to get it.

They spent twenty years emasculating men, and eventually realized that it isn't what they want at all. And when they figured out that they wanted real men, many of them had disappeared or weren't interested.

Women need to take a step back -- a big step -- and do a lot of introspection. While yes, this is America, you can't have everything. You can accomplish anything you want, but it always comes with a price. And if women want a real man, then they're going to have to find it in themselves to be able to respect him, to appreciate all he does, and to work as hard as he does at their life, whether inside or outside of the home. I think most men are willing to do just about anything for their wives, if they knew that she was grateful and appreciative. Is it too much to ask to take our egos down a few pegs?

If women want real men to re-emerge, then they need to make themselves worthy of them.

9 comments:

Baz said...

I don't know who you all are hanging out with, but I don't know anyone (well) who fits the descriptions you've given of deficient men or women. No, I take that back. I've known a few people who've cheated on their partners. For some, it was bad judgment and they've made amends. For others, it's an ongoing pattern. But our closest friends don't do any of these things. Maybe that's why their such good friends.

All of our good friends and families, men, women, and even children work very hard and make sacrifices for their loved ones.

I don't need to protect my wife, she does just fine on her own, although if she got in over her head, I'd step in in a heartbeat, but that's never happened. Does that make me less of a man? Nope.

Maybe, since you're saying that men and women are engaging in the same selfish, self-absorbed disinterested behaviors, maybe this isn't a man/woman thing. Maybe it's a modern-day-American thing.

But I don't see how jobs (either having or not) have anything to do with being a "real man" or a "real woman," whatever those things mean.

I will say that anyone who thinks women demand special treatment to advance in the workplace, doesn't know much about office politics. It's waaaaaaay more complicated than that.

And I think these two articles way oversimplify a very complex social trend.

Scott Jacobs said...

"The problem is that interaction with most women today leads them quickly to the conclusion that few women are worth dying for."

Despite the fact that I dislike 99% of humanity, that doesn't change the fact that my lizard-brain would make me die for them anyways.

Respect them for their choices or not, they remain worth dying for.

But you can bet I'd be waiting to have a word or two with them once they got to the other side...

DS,LK & F said...

Ooh! Backpedaling worthy of Obama/Wright.

Got a female mammalian extremity caught in a laundry compression device didja?

defintion (2) Merriam-Webster
Patronize: to adopt an air of condescension toward : treat haughtily or coolly.

Yeah. That'll make it all better.

Allen said...

You are still missing the point.

"While men are emasculated sissy boys..."

Insults are not a form of praise by the way.

Unknown said...

I don’t trust you, you seem to have “gotten it” much too quickly for a woman. Most womanly responses are along the lines of “not all women are like that” and just generally blaming the man.

Tom Leykis has been arguing against feminism and it’s values for a very long time now, and the women that call his show bare the stupidity and isolationist thinking that most women have. Dick Masterson also has his share of females call his voicemail and just plain don’t get it - hell, even when he was on Dr. Phil no one got him, and they refused to listen.

In the brunt of this very public and very loud denial of the facts, why should I trust you? Your comrades have shown just how much you do not get it, and yet here you do an about face less than 12 hours later.

Please, your explanation for your thinking would be welcome.

Steve said...

I went back to school to pursue a more portable career, so that my ex-GF of 5 years could geographically pursue opportunities. She resented this and tried to discourage me, because, as she had the nerve to tell me, that she needed me to help with her children. I encouraged her to move away, and then back, while I was in school, which resulted in her breaking through the glass ceiling (whatever the hell that is) in her profession, tripling her salary and climbing to the top rung. In the process, I felt I became a taxi service and handyman, without even an attempt at affection or caring on her part. Couldn't make her happy, and I'm glad to be away from her and her liberalism. I work in a profession now where men are a 5% minority; I like women a lot, but I doubt I'll find one who can meet me as an equal partner around here in the northeast US. Time to move on. Rant over.

Expatriate Owl said...

So many women entice men whom they can manipulate, but once they get such a man they cannot respect him. And, in such a situation, the more the man tries to please the woman, the more he allows her to manipulate him and the less she respects him, and so the relationship spirals downward.

I finally found my woman after, about 30 years ago, I decided to be a strong, motivated and independent man, and resolved to eschew manipulative women. I realized that just because a woman is strong, motivated and independent does not mean she has to be manipulative with her man, and that if I really wanted to I could get a real woman who is intelligent and accomplished, without compromising my manhood.

My wife and I don't fit any of the stereotypes, but it has worked very well! We are married 20+ years. Each of us has a career, but our household comes first. And our offspring have as role models two strong, motivated, principled and achieving parents who are dedicated to the family, and to making one another stronger and more secure. It is an environment conducive to tough-mindedness and achievement.

My decision to be a strong, motivated and independent man came during a rapidly-disintegrating relationship with a manipulative woman whose achievements in the business world were (and are) seemingly significant. The next evening, when I knew she intended to dump me (she had said as much to her neighbor, whom I had known since high school), I pre-empted her by terminating the relationship myself (which she really, really did not expect).

I almost feel bad for this woman. As of last January, it seems that she had filed for divorce from the man who finally married her about 3 years ago. Her modus operandi is to sweet talk a man, then manipulate him, and then dump him after she loses her respect for him because he allows himself to be manipulated by her.

Meanwhile, I have been married 20+ years to a woman who is even more intelligent, even more educated, and even more accomplished professionally, but who is not manipulative, and who allows her husband to be a real man.

The women out there who merit real men are the ones who let their men be real men.

mkfreeberg said...

This is probably an appropriate place to share something I began to notice about my ex, shortly before she became an ex.

I started to notice that I was never doing anything nice for her. Then I figured out why: I was doing nice things for her fairly often, but whenever I did, it became my job. As in, next time I had the opportunity to do it again it was only an occasion for potential disappointment on her end, should I fail to do it for whatever reason.

So the first time I would maybe get a grudging "thanx" and there would be absolutely no expression of gratitude the second time, since by then it was simply something I was "supposed" to do.

I think a lot of guys are in that boat. We end up occupying a very special place in the lives of our women; it's the role occupied by the one person she knows who can't ever be thanked for anything. We're just meeting our minimum obligations, which in turn are being steadily defined upward so that no one ever has to be grateful.

A drunken bum pounding on her door at three in the morning, would get more respect.

Physics Geek said...

If women want real men to re-emerge, then they need to make themselves worthy of them.

I think if you'd led with that in your previous post, you'd have avoided some of the grief you received. As to your comment that we men should MAN UP!, well, I feel pretty much the same away about that as I did when Al Gore hired a woman as a campaign advisor to give him advice on how to be a man.

You're a pretty good read, Cassy, but you really stepped in it in your previous post. If you tell us to MAN UP! and we obey, we aren't really manning up. Just an FYI. If I told you to GIRL UP! and get back in the kitchen (or whatever I think a woman should do), it would sound arrogant and stupid.