The Importance of Traditional Gender Roles

Traditional Gender Roles are the fort that has been under siege since the beginning of Feminism’s war on all that is masculine. And what has Feminism wrought?

Feminism has created a generation of women who largely don’t know how to make a man feel like one, and a generation of men who cannot do the same for women.

I am not suggesting that women should earn less than men for the same job, or should be subject to domestic violence, raped by acquaintances or should have to take out the trash. What I am saying however, is that men should be decisive and be persons of action, not words; they shouldn’t cry and they most definitely should take out the trash.

Traditional Gender Roles have less to do with a division of the chores along traditionally “sexist” lines or even with efficiency in co-habitation. Rather it has to do with what we traditionally associate with Masculine or Feminine traits or behavior, and what we wish to project. One can cognitively reason with the silliness of this behavior, but it is undeniable that our concept of what is masculine and what is feminine is partially, if not mostly, a product of what we learned from what we saw growing up. One may be enlightened and yet still adhere to “traditional gender roles.”

The Masculine and the Feminine are not in opposition. One doesn’t win, while the other loses. Men were not worse off because women were earning their equal rights. Men were worse off because they were too small to deal with an equal. They could no longer control women and as a result they reacted violently, or they turned in their man cards so that they could be walked all over, thus doing everyone a disservice.

While traditional patriarchal roles have started to break down (a positive change), there has also been a movement towards the middle by men, who are now free to express themselves, and who now have a greater confusion as to what it means to be a man (a negative side effect). Now when you meet another couple it as likely that the man cooks as the woman does not, as it is that he has no ability to fix household items. Today’s woman will see nothing wrong and think nothing less of the man who prepares her dinner after a hard day’s work. However, she very well may think less of him if he doesn’t live up to his “manly” duties of fixing doorknobs, changing oil or protecting his family.

It is okay that men are expected to share more of the burden when it comes to rearing children and household chores, but they can not and must not shirk their duties as the “man” of the family, less they be degraded in the eyes of women. This is not an exchange of all that comes with “manliness,” for your enlightened attitude towards cleaning toilets.

Women in the Workplace

Women today rightfully insist upon providing for themselves, rather than living in indentured servitude. This after having watched a generation of men cheat on their mothers, leaving their mother-housewives with little recourse, without the financial ability to support themselves should they have chosen to opt out of the situation. They would stay in loveless marriages because they had no other option.

As women entered the workplace and gained financial independence, not coincidentally the following things happened: female infidelity rates rose and so did divorce rates. No longer pinned to bad marriages (read: bad men) and able to meet suitors in a work environment they previously didn’t have access to, women were now free and able to celebrate their sexuality.

Women and Feminists are not to blame for this change. However, with male sexuality and masculinity under siege, it is no wonder that a large percentage of men have retreated in to their shells unable to cope with an equal counterpart who has taken away some of the clearest indicators of manliness.

If men are no longer the breadwinners, and are no longer needed for protection from predatory animals or tribes…then what the hell are they good for? And how the hell do they prove their worthiness as men?

Society has taken away our need to be self-reliant, which is what defines a man.

Man found himself living in an abstract world, where he was no longer prized for his ability to provide, hunt and protect. Instead all his rough edges were filed down until all that was left were automated nubs, devoid of sexual characteristics who were taught to be afraid of their physicality and sexuality; what once distinguished them as masculine, now made them evil. Our virility vilified, we became impotent and gun shy.

We had been turned in to indistinguishable space monkeys, clacking away at computer keyboards, with our soft callous-free hands more likely to be manicured than black-and-blue from a misguided hammer; soft spongy flaccid handshakes replacing sandpaper-y meaty vise-grip ones.

Feminism was winning, and then Masculinity was lost. Rather than cede all power, men decided to slum in manicure shops, beauty aisles and hair salons. We grew up being told what women wanted from men: sensitivity and caring, a man in touch with his feelings. This, along with man’s lost status as sole provider and breadwinner, together with a protracted adolescence now stretching midway through one’s twenties as the result of increasing financial pressure on each subsequent generation, had created a generation of mama’s boys.

Now is the time for males to answer the call. Now is the time for these boys to start acting like men.

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What is Meninism?

Is it a movement? Is it a reaction to Feminism?

Meninism is indeed a movement. But Meninism is not a movement in the same way that Feminism was and continues to be.

While Feminism as a movement had its time, as of now the pendulum has swung too far the other way. This is common with any movement; once started it will serve its purpose and then inevitably it will go too far.

Meninism is a reaction not so much to Feminism, but to its bastard offspring, that is a feminized male populace, that in its effort to accommodate the desires of women has lost its own identity and has gone too far in its efforts to please and has now left women wondering, “where have all the real men gone?”

Where women started out desiring equality and fair treatment, they didn’t want to end up with men trying to meet them in the middle. As is the unintended consequence of what we ask for and think we want, women ended up with men who gladly handed over their balls thinking that was the way to make women happy and thus keep women from bothering them, so that they may drink beer and watch 250 channels of television in peace. The unintended consequences were men thinking it was okay to cry, acting as vain as women in “shopping for couture,” and stealing their girlfriend’s facial cleanser.

Meninism is about what it means to be a man in today’s world. Meninism is about the the things our fathers should have taught us but didn’t. They were too busy being bushwacked by feminism. They’ve witnessed the entire spectrum of what it means to be a man during the time of feminism, which has bridged their own fathers, the father figure of the 50’s, to the emasculated, androgynous lumps of arrested adolescence that they raised who are now in their late 20’s and early 30’s. This is a time where the popular representation of the father is the demonized forms of Homer Simpson and Al Bundy.

A Call to Arms

This isn’t a “woe is us” diatribe. As a matter of fact, it’s a “call to arms.” It’s time for today’s boys to stand up and finally become the men that they should be. No longer will this prolonged adolescence be tolerated, instead these boys will finally learn what it means to become a man in today’s world. And not only will women support the effort, but they will stand up and cheer. The Meninists of today won’t do these things to simply quell the bitching of women in order to keep themselves happy, rather they will do so because that is what men do…and naturally what women want.

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