Make Men Masculine Again

Make Men Masculine Again presented by Allie Stuckey

Rape, murder, war—they all have one thing in common: Men.

Aggression, violence, ambition unchecked by conscience—all the stuff of “toxic masculinity,” right?

And, the solution is obvious: make men less toxic.

Make men less masculine.

Make men more like women.

But I’m here to tell you that this way of thinking is not only wrong, it’s dangerous.

Here’s why: When you try to make men more like women, you don’t get less “toxic masculinity,” you get more.

Why? Because bad men don’t become good when they stop being men; they become good when they stop being bad. Aggression, violence, and unbridled ambition can’t be eliminated from the male psyche; they can only be harnessed. And when they are harnessed, they are tools for good, not for harm.

Here’s a secret that every woman knows: Women want real men—men they can count on and, yes, look up to. No amount of feminist theory will change that. I don’t know any woman, at any age, who is attracted to a passive man who looks to her to be his provider, protector and leader. Every woman I know wants a strong, responsible man. That’s not a consequence of a social construct or cultural pressure—it’s innate.

The devaluation of masculinity won’t end well because feminine, passive men don’t stop evil. Passive men don’t defend, protect or provide. Passive men don’t lead. Passive men don’t do the things we have always needed men to do for society to thrive.

In his book, The Abolition of Man, English social philosopher C.S. Lewis writes about this problem. He describes the tension “between cerebral man and visceral man.” “By his intellect,” Lewis explains, man “is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.”

We need both. Take away one, and you’re left with a man who’s either weak or wicked. And in a world of wickedness, weak men are nothing more than enablers of wicked men.

Rape, murder, war—they all have two things in common: bad men who do the raping, murdering, and warring; and weak men who won’t stop them. We need good men who will.

It’s not masculinity that’s toxic. It’s the lack of it.