Toxic Masculinity?

Graveyard shift just did a sort of commentary on the Gillette ad and responses to it. It was interesting to hear a different take, but I must say I did not see the positive as the main message. When I saw the ad, I saw an assumption that men in general require shaming. It came across as a moralistic finger wagging. It reminded me of a scene I have too often seen. A child becomes angry and the teacher or parent lectures that child on how he needs to be kinder, better, more patient. But that child has been putting up with a sneaking, manipulative little twerp and has had it up to the eye-balls.

The twerp has been successful. The twerp knows how to say the right words or look generally innocent or at least repentant for the authorities. The twerp also will often stay just inside the lines, invading space, but not touching, saying something quietly in order to get a louder reaction, making insinuations about the other child or someone the other child cares about, name calling but saying “It’s just a nick-name”. The sensitive child with a slightly bigger bubble will likely get in trouble.

The ad is like that twerp. It is nudging the message that men ought to be ashamed, because men have done bad stuff. It presents a stereotype of men being at least stupid at worst perverse and suggests that that is the normative state that must be changed.

Growing up, I did hear a little “boys will be boys” from my father concerning my brother who came after six girls and before one more sister. It was usually in reference to his not being a early talker, wanting to play outside, and not wanting to sit still which led to some difficulties with early schooling. Mama would become frustrated with something that she had dealt with with my older two brothers, but had long NOT needed to deal with because she had girls, who presented their own issues. Sometimes, I still think the expression was overused, but I also saw that it was partly a response to a bunch of girls and the mother weighing in on some traits that needed to be allowed a positive outlet. He has grown into a rather responsible young man, who generally is considerate of others. He sometimes lacks subtlety when it comes to social niceties, but I’m not much one to talk about that.

On the child v. manipulative twerp—not only have I observed it happen to other children, I have been the child. I have been disciplined for shutting a sister outside the bedroom. I was avoiding her because she kept talking and invading my space when I wanted quiet. I was nearly disciplined another time for “stomping” on her glasses. We had gotten into a fight and I knocked her glasses off her face, but that is not the story she told. On the other hand, later she got into trouble for talking in class when she was responding to another student in her “inside voice” that was always just a bit loud. I was not the other student.

Back to the ad—it has not come to be in a vacuum. In my history class at college, toxic masculinity came up a number of times. The message was that men, and white men in particular had a tendency towards toxic masculinity, that somehow men, and white men in particular, were prone to violence and insecurity, that men, and white men in particular, were the ones to blame for most if not all of societies ills.

Can we at least have some honesty? Following Chesterton’s quote, “I’m what’s wrong with the world.” Rather than looking to point the blame on this or that group for all the problems, let’s first take honest stock of ourselves, acknowledging circumstance without blaming it, acknowledging other people’s contributions, while taking responsibility for my choices, not lumping today’s men with everything bad their father’s did or everything bad that the news reports. When it comes to reporting, remember the “Man bites dog” rule. Newspapers are not likely to report ordinary incidents, they want to report what is exciting. “Dog bites man” is not a worthy headline, “man bites dog” might be. Another thing to take into account with reporting—the fake rape cases. Whether it’s hockey or football, young men get into a lot of trouble when a woman accuses them even if she has no evidence. This is not actually good because it presumes guilt. When someone brings an accusation of wrongdoing, we should remain agnostic until we have evidence. I accept that you are saying this, but if the other party says otherwise, rather than privileging one or the other, let’s have due process. Who are witnesses? Is there any physical evidence? Do either of these individuals have a record of lying or truth-telling? I do not want the crap of emotional delivery being a proxy for evidence. I want men to grow up to take responsibility for their actions, to be virtuous men, and especially to be good Christians. I don’t want them to be burdened with an imaginary debt that they owe the world because their gender or their ethnicity.

Not so honest debates and message driven storytelling

I listened to an annoying “debate” between Raphael Lataster and Trent Horn. The question presented was “Does God Exist?” Trent Horn argued the classic contingency case as well as making an appeal to recognition of moral absolutes. Raphael Lataster stated that those arguments didn’t measure up and that Mr. Horn needed to argue from probability and said that things like polytheism, pantheism, and deism could also be options on the basis of the arguments that Mr. Horn made. He also asked why God did not simply reveal himself, if he was all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful. He claimed that he was agnostic but not unfriendly to theism or Christianity in particular, that he was willing to believe if God would just reveal himself. This he described as “troubling”.

As the debate went on, Mr. Horn continued to explain deductive reasoning, give examples, defend his arguments and ask Mr. Lataster to make an argument. Mr. Lataster continued to make statements about the necessity of considering alternative theisms and his not needing to defend his position since his position was agnosticism while saying that Mr. Horn was not sufficiently proving his point and that he was using controversial premises and that God, if extant, ought to just show himself.

In the cross examination, though, it seemed pretty clear that he was not actually willing to see God. He favours pantheism and materialism, but is agnostic.

I then was listening to Dr. Taylor Marshall and Timothy Gordon talk about Tolkein and Thomas Aquinas on Analogy of Being. As they were talking about the story telling, and the ridiculousness of explaining in the midst of a story or a game the symbolic nature of something, Dr. Marshall said, “You have to let the person listening do some of the work and risk them not getting it.”

One of the comparisons they made was of playing with children (they have eight and five children respectively). If you are playing cops and robbers, you do not explain “Now, you realize this isn’t really a gun.” or “This isn’t really a jail, it’s a tree,” because that ruins the fun. The children know that the gun is fake, the tree is a tree, but for the purpose of the game, the tree IS a jail and the guns are dangerous.

Too often in Christian fiction and movies, the authors make things too explicit. They are message rather than story driven. Think of God’s not Dead. This one actually had some decent stories set up, but they allowed the story to be dictated by the message. The atheist professor had to be a jerk who kept his girl-friend waiting on the table of her superiors. He was an atheist because God did not heal his mother. They made sure to tell you, “God’s not dead,” but then, while they set up a premise of a debate happening in the classroom, they did not follow up on that by actually having a debate. And all the Christians go to the concert to sing “God’s not Dead” while the atheist gets hit by a car and is given the opportunity to say a death-bed prayer.

There is a reason Christian movies have a reputation for being cheesy and preachy.

I enjoyed Priceless more than God’s not Dead in the end, but even that one has the dude who just sounds like a preacher sermonizing rather than being the sheriff that he was supposed to be. Still, overall it was driven by the story of a man who took a job at a low point in life, only to realize it was a bad job. What happens next? They follow the story through.  It does have a happy ending, but they did allow the characters to grow and the story to build.

Led by a spirit

"..., but he had no principles that were not common to others, if not to all; for others believed in the direct teaching of the Spirit, and these mistook their feelings for the effects of the Spirit, and their transient thoughts for emanations from the Spirit; and being thus enlightened according to their leisure and to the encouragement they gave to their thoughts and fancies, they could frequently see farther than other people into the Scriptures and the will of God, or fancied they could;..."
 How is it that so many people, claiming to be led by the Holy Spirit, claiming to follow Jesus, wind up going so many different directions? The above quote is from a book that was written about Matthias and his “Kingdom of Zion” that he tried to set up in the early nineteenth century. He was able to attach himself to a Bible study group who accepted him first as a prophet and then as ruler.
How is it possible for sincere people, involved in Bible study and prayer, to develop the idea that heaven and hell only really exist here on earth and the idea that souls go to another body when the people die, consequently your spirit match is of greater importance than your legal marriage?
Now, to be fair to the folks in the Kingdom of Zion, people today do many of the same things excusing their behavior on God’s will. We still interpret things idiosyncratically, and we still tend to rely on personal interpretation or whatever preacher/teacher we respect to tell us what scripture means (all while saying that it is just scripture). They had spirit matches, we have soul mates and incompatibility. Plus ça change…

Robert Matthews (Matthias actual name) denied Jesus functionally. He claimed to be the Spirit of Truth, having the spirit of Jesus and Matthias the apostle in himself and speaking on behalf of the Father while claiming the title of Father for himself and Mother for his “wife”. It was a bit eerie hearing that Jim Jones demanded that his congregation call him Father and his wife Mother.  While Robert Matthews never denied the existence of God and indeed stressed his own version of Old Testament understanding, Jim Jones ultimately wanted to get his people to leave Christianity, the entire Bible, and any god outside himself behind.
Both men were extremely controlling of those around them. While Jim Jones ultimately was more successful in drawing a large body of people around him and died in their midst while causing many to die rather than relinquish the dream, the control, Matthias did not. After he was accused of killing one of the members of the “kingdom” and beating his daughter who was married, he basically was abandoned by all but one person and wound up wandering the west before fading away into obscurity. We do not know where he died. We do know he had a run in with Joseph Smith.
What spirit led these men to death? I see the seemingly sympathetic smile of the gentleman with cloven foot from the fairy tales I grew up reading. “You want power? You want security? Money? Love? Trust me, I’ll give you what you want. Just follow me.”

Robert Matthews was apparently a natural leader and may have been responsible for a couple of physical deaths to say nothing of the spiritual. Jim Jones was even bigger, more successful, more set against Christianity, responsible for more death. He, too, was a self proclaimed prophet. He too made the claim of being what people called god.
While Jim Jones had a vastly larger following, both of them had people who otherwise would have been considered respectable following after them. How do so many people, some well educated, some apparently devout, become caught up in these movements that bare the fruit of Satan--lies, immorality, and death?