Toxic leftism.
Frame capture from the Gillette-sponsored short film “We Believe.”
Men, I have some disturbing news. It seems that we – and apparently not just some of us but all of us – are toxic.
We learn this first via a September 2018 report from the American Psychological Association titled, “Harmful masculinity and violence.” The first paragraph of the report begins beneath a subhead that reads, “Early socialization of negative masculine ideals.” The opening text then reads,
Western culture defines specific characteristics to fit the patriarchal ideal masculine construct. The socialization of masculine ideals starts at a young age and defines ideal masculinity as related to toughness, stoicism, heterosexism, self-sufficient attitudes and lack of emotional sensitivity.”
Oh my God, our boys are being taught to be tough, stoic, heterosexual and self-sufficient! What next, competitive and gentlemanly?
Next, we hear from an iconic American consumer brand. Gillette, in a sanctimonious video ad, called to our attention the toxicity of boys wrestling harmlessly in the back yard and men cooking on an outdoor grill. The implication is clear. The message isn’t that some men who grill outdoors also behave in unacceptable ways. No, toxicity lurks in any man who grills outdoors.
Let’s stop and think about what would happen if a national brand advertiser was as broadly stereotypical in its portrayal of women. Suppose a carmaker showed a woman behind the wheel being a “woman driver.” Or imagine a drug maker showing a woman berating her husband in an overwrought emotional tizzy. Can you imagine the backlash?
In the musical My Fair Lady, Professor Henry Higgins asks, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” Today, the virtue signaling Left is asking, “Why can’t a man be more like a woman?” Gillette’s message and the APA’s report both say in effect that boys aren’t nascent men, they’re imperfect girls.
This long-brewing attitude toward boys and men ignores biology, 5,000 years of recorded history and about 250 years of American history.
Throughout the animal kingdom, males protect females lest females fall disproportionately to predation and the species die. Only among leftist humans is that decried as patriarchal.
From the time of the caveman right up to now, the job of taming nature for purposes of comfort and safety has fallen almost exclusively to men. Into the 99thpercentile it is men who are the linemen and the roustabouts and the stevedores and the drywallers and the plumbers and the HVAC technicians and the carpenters and the loggers and yes, the police and the firefighters. The same for defending the peace. The pointy end of the spear is still almost entirely male.
Yes, there are bad men afoot in America. But it is yet undeniably true that since the 18thcentury, that unique breed called the American Man has freed more people from bondage and lifted more people out of poverty and fought more fiercely for justice than any other cohort in history.
You smug lefties and angry feminists sniff at the American Man if you want. But you’ll miss him when he’s gone.
Excellent column, Mr. Gleiser.
_______________________
God made man, MAN. And God made woman, WOMAN. As I, and millions of men and women inherently know, this razor blade ad is an asinine attempt by leftist progressives to step into God’s province and define what His crowning creation –mankind– is about. Such leftist progressive secular humanists are woefully committing great error and sin in what they are trying to do. GOD alone defined the man, the woman and the family. Men are masculine and women are feminine. This “toxic masculinity thing” so-called, in my humble opinion, is utter balderdash and rubbish. It is but the latest attempt, to “push God out” of the public square and the private lives of Americans. American men, of which I am one, will vigorously defend and cling to belief in God, the traditional role of man, of being proudly masculine without apology to anyone, and to a belief in the concrete moral values as set down in The Bible. Almighty God defined all these matters, for all time, with crystal clear clarity. If only people would investigate, read, and adhere to what God’s Word has already ruled on. His way is not only the best way, it is the only way to be the best man a man can be. No higher and blessed estate, than a Christian man being married to a Christian woman and raising a Christian family–something the left is ignorant of.
What the leftist progressive cabal is trying to do is to destroy America as Founded by forcibly tearing the American people away from our clinging to our Faith and traditional Ideals as a Free Constitutional Republic one nation under God. They will NEVER achieve that warped and twisted agenda, for real AMERICANS deeply love God, the traditional Family, and Freedom.
Let us recall what our 44th president said in a moment of unguarded elitist candor, that the American people* [*i.e. the American public at large] that we are “bitter clingers.” Perhaps, one of the very few things he stated correctly. Americans, WE THE PEOPLE, cherish our idealism and our belief in traditional values, STILL holding them very dear, as did our Founding Fathers, for all time yet to come. God bless The United States of America.
Quoting you, “This long-brewing attitude toward boys and men ignores biology, 5,000 years of recorded history and about 250 years of American history.” I would add to your comment, “AND millions of years of evolution, which is even more to the point.” For virtually ALL of human history, men have been bringing home the bacon while women tended the hearth. Men and women have been different for a very long time.
The idiot left can’t change that fact, try as they might. I don’t need changing, I have nothing to apologize for nor does any man I know. My son is and my wife and I want him to be among other things “tough, stoic, and self-sufficient.” I aspire to be that way, too. But Gillette tells us that the opposite of those virtues are more to be desired and, apparently, represent the feminine virtues as, the LGBTXYZ craze aside, there are only two sexes, male and female.
I binged the follow definition and it answers Gillette pretty well: “It would probably be more accurate to say that Libertinism is the opposite of Stoicism because it is about indulging your desires without reference to any moral restraints or greater good. The modern usage of stoicism is more about personality, meaning resilience and calm acceptance.”
We men don’t mind a share of emotional sensitivity thrown in, but we men are just fine as we are, thank you. Sure there are bad apples, but both sexes have their share of those who fall short of the ideal.
I shave but I don’t use Gillette products. Now I never will, nor will this family by ANY Proctor and Gable product, it being the parent company of the jerks at Gillette. They have lost my business forever. And if enough men follow suite, maybe Gillette will have the opportunity to try being “tough, stoic, and self-sufficient” as their company withers on the progressive vine.
Revisit Gillette in 6 months to see results.
Themes like this aren’t committed casually. KNOW that Gillette’s commercial was storyboarded and focus-grouped like crazy before it saw the light of day.
3 examples of preaching-to-the-choir of LIKELY buyers (who else matters?):
1. Nike, whose business is UP after controversial Kapernick ads.
2. Rush Limbaugh, who, as you know, aggregates his audience by getting loyal Dittoheads to listen daily. As Rush himself has shared on-air: “I used to sell baseball tickets. And I learned that enough people want to buy baseball tickets that you don’t have to bother trying to sell tickets to people who don’t.”
3. Donald Trump, President after losing the Popular Vote.
I don’t care who storyboarded what to which focus group. I’m a focus group of one and I am sick to here of virtue signaling sanctimony from companies that want my business. If I want to be preached to, I’ll go to church. Tell me why your razor shaves more closely than your competitor’s razor and I’ll listen. Tell me how to live and what a bad guy I am and I’m gone. I am in the bottom fourth of a can of Foamy and I’m using cartridge number three of a four pack of Mach 3 blades. When both are exhausted, I will begin using the Harry’s starter kit that I ordered yesterday. I have been shaving with Gillette razors and lather since my voice changed. That is coming to an end. If Gillette’s results are up in six months, it won’t be my fault.
Consider yourself held-harmless. And with Roger Stone under arrest, discussing this week-old sideshow is less uncomfortable.
Indeed, there could be sudden progress on the Shutdown, and not just because today is another no-pay payday.
Trump was already blinking (as Senate Republicans are wandering, “a down payment” on “steel slats” will now do). The Master of Distraction would prefer his followers applauding whatever-he-declares-a-win, rather than having them watch Mueller’s noose tighten.
DON’T MISS RUSH today.
More words from this cite’s village idiot.
I applaud your judgement and conservation of words to say the obvious about the heckler (idiot) that I have been wanting to say for a long time. How any Left-wing American can argue about the number of Trump haters that can dance on the head of a pin while we are rapidly losing the country’s Heritage and God given Liberty due to the Marxist subversion and corruption of EVERY institution we used to trust, is beyond me!
For some reason, unknown to me and those who understand our electoral system, we elect our President by the Electoral College, NOT the popular vote. The Electoral College process gives “weight and voice” to ALL the states in our union, not just small elitist geographic enclaves of progressive leftists such as LA, NYC, Chicago Metro Area, etc. For the Founding Fathers of our nation knew of the very real danger of just taking into account the popular vote alone. Thank God, we had such wise Founders who could foresee what could occur* [*i.e. such as the election of Mrs. Clinton] as she would have been an unmitigated disaster to our beloved Constitutional Republic pushing our country as far to the left as she could get away with, embracing the very same seriously flawed ideas of the razor ad in question.
IDEA: Stop shaving entirely!
Consider the Ted Cruz look.
Regarding your Toxic male commentary, it was right on….what have we come to? Here are some interesting statistics for you: according to (https://singlemotherguide.com/single-mother-statistics/) of all single parent families, 91% are single mothers, and according to (https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28) 71% of primary teachers are female. So one has to ask, where are the boys learning to become toxic?????
Good point.
Read-it-and-weep amigos.
He caved.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/01/nancy-pelosi-breaks-trump-shutdown-ends
No cave.
1. President Trump wanted those employees affected by the Democrat government shutdown to be paid. The Democrats–after some 35 days!–are STILL shirking their Constitutional responsibilities to address the border crisis (and gloating about it! while every American citizen is imperiled) by refusing to work with President Trump. Shame is on the Democrats.
2. President Trump is giving Democrats 3 weeks to get THE WALL funding done. If Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer fail to fund the building of THE WALL, President Trump will have no choice as he has stated in no uncertain terms, but to declare a National Emergency and build the wall. Again, UNLESS the Democrats start to miraculously work in good faith legislatively and FUND THE WALL.
3. What the Democrats have done–apparently & stupidly unbeknown to themselves–is to give President Trump, in my humble opinion, an ironclad case for National Emergency which no court in the land will oppose, as He has proven himself, having worked exhaustively in good faith while Democrats have been an impediment, for one, by leaving Washington D.C. on a junket in the Caribbean. One way or another the wall is coming. BUILD A WALL, CRIME WILL FALL!
WE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE elected President Trump in 2016. And WE are going to do it again in 2020. Lastly, the leftist media pundits & poobahs are never going to separate Trump supporters from the President. NEVER.
No sir, Donald Trump did not cave. He simply listened to his advisors and offered a deal to the Democrats that would do exactly what Nancy was asking – open the government and we will negotiate. So, Nancy, you have until 2/15 to solve this problem or face the consequences. But she has backed herself into a corner, repeatedly promising NO WALL! How is 700 miles of wall okay, but 710 miles is immoral? Build a car but stop before the engine gets built?
There has to be a better retort to the omnipresent leftist trolls that sometime haunt this web site. It is hopeless to try to answer their taunts with a logical conversation when their objective is to get attention while NOT addressing the issues at hand. I would suggest that we DO NOT take a defensive (reactionary) position against their predictable Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS blather) but ask WHY the Leftist solutions can solve ANYTHING given the HISTORY of the Left’s inspired tyranny that ALWAYS results (Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Castro, Chavez, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, etc.)
In other words get the Leftists to give us their final goals and objectives and explain how society can be forced to willingly obtain their imaginary Utopia. Let’s put the Left on the defensive as we take the OFFENSIVE position by attacking their unlimited loony ideas BEFORE they propose them by exposing the FALLACIES in their fundamental belief System: that replaces God (and our rights from God) with Autocratic Government Elites that declare their superiority to run the whole World. Their MO is to plunder the wealth of their respective nations to solidify their power and reserve OUR God given rights for themselves while denying OURS at the same time. “Law for Thee, But Not for Me”; as they justify their murderous corrupt rule by sheer dictatorship and fear. Without the Constitutional Representative Republic we share as inspired by God from our Founders, we are doomed to be conquered by evil men from within, given their LIES to gain power over us. “A Republic, if you can keep it” replied Doctor Franklin.
It is scary that we are on the very edge of witnessing the end of America as we know it given the corruption and lawlessness being practiced by the unholy alliance of Democrats and weak Republicans in Government and the lying (non-free propaganda) Media/Press that is determined to dismantle our culture, REGARDLESS of the pain and suffering that we will endure. They just don’t care BECAUSE they are evil!