If you’ve been paying attention to the social trends, increasing numbers of boys and men are struggling in just about every area. This is happening at disastrous levels. Here are just a handful of data and statistics:
Crisis in Education: In the starting ages of school, girls are 14 percentage points more likely to be “school ready” than boys at age 5. It progresses on to high school where 2/3rds of the students in the top 10% are girls, while the lowest 10% are 2/3rds boys. Fifty-six percent of women graduate from college as compared to 44% of men.
Crisis in Labor: One in three men with only a high school diploma are now out of work. This is the biggest drop in employment among young men ages 25 to 34. Overall men earn less than they did 40 years ago, while at the same time, women’s lifetime earnings have increased 33 percent.
Crisis in Health: In recent years, men’s life expectancy has even gone down, while women’s has remained the same. Close to three out of every four suicides and drug overdoses are men. Men are nearly three times as likely as women to become dependent on alcohol.
Crisis in Relationships: Roughly 15 percent of men say they have no close friends which is up from 3 percent in 1990. In 2014, more young men were living with their parents than with a wife or even a partner.
Though we should be grateful for the improvements experienced by women, the decline of the other side of the gender scale comes with real personal and societal cost. What has happened? What is the source? Richard Reeves addresses this crisis in his highly acclaimed book Of Boys and Men by noting that men increasingly have an "aspirational problem." Men, in significantly less numbers, no longer aspire to leadership and responsibility in the way they once did. Reeves writes, “It is not that men have fewer opportunities. It is that they are not taking them.” He further asserts that there is something in modern culture that is producing this aspirational gap. One culprit may include a growing shift to a service economy where physical strength is less valued and needed. Another may be the cult of youth ("OK Boomer") which minimizes the necessary wisdom given by older men. But the most significant culprit has been the ongoing battle of the sexes which has taken its toll on traditional masculinity. Masculinity has been labeled as "toxic." As best selling science fiction writer, Hugh Howey, protested, “Testosterone is problematic…women should be in charge of everything.” Culture has become increasingly feminized, leading to the backlash of men’s rights and "red pill" activism, as well as all kinds of reactionary and often angry movements.
The Real Cause
Though the gender war is real, as Michael Foster observes in It's Good To Be A Man, the combatants in this battle of the sexes are really the unwitting participants of a larger fight. The real war is not between the genders but on gender itself. The root of the problem is not misogyny (battle against women) or misandry (battle against men), but androgyny (the battle against sexual distinctions). For example, Warren Farrell, who is widely considered as the father of the men’s movement, actually advocates that “there should be neither a women’s movement blaming men, nor a men’s movement blaming women, but a gender liberation movement freeing both sexes from the rigid roles of the past toward more flexible roles for their future.” Or, as expressed more concisely by Gloria Steinem, “We need to raise boys more like we raise girls.” This has all stemmed from the radical feminist movement which has separated gender from sex.
The logical outcome of this separation has led elite and progressive culture telling us we need to move beyond “binary” (male/female) distinctions of gender to embrace a more fluid spectrum and continuity so that gender now has no meaning. Politicians are unable to define what a woman is. This has led to the invention of a confusing jumble of pronouns like: they/them/theirs, ze/hir, xe/xem/xyr and sie/hir. Some teachers can no longer say “boys and girls” in classrooms. In some school districts, young men can go into girls’ locker rooms or bathrooms if they self-identify as a female. This is not to mention the use of puberty blockers and reassignment surgeries. Actress Kate Hudson shared her plans to raise her daughter with a “genderless approach.” There has been a slow and steady process from claiming that the genders are interchangeable to claiming they are indistinguishable.
This assault on gender is not new. Its roots go back to the Fall in Genesis 3 and can be traced through the development of paganism. In creation, God established an order with man in leadership and the woman as a complimentary and equal partner. Together they rule over all of creation, including animal life. We see this established in the creation narrative below:
19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. (Genesis 2:19-24)
In the next chapter of Genesis, we see Satan’s efforts at turning this order upside down.
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. (Genesis 3:1-6)
The animals were meant to be subject to the rule of humanity. This is turned on its head as Satan uses a serpent to counsel the woman. (3:1-5) The woman was meant to be a helper to the man, and this is turned on its head as she is now influencing him in rebellion against God. (3:6) Adam was to follow and obey the command of God, yet this is turned on its head as he rebels against it. What is essential to notice is that the root of this overturning is the lie the serpent gives to Eve, “You will be like God.” (3:5) This aim “to be like God” is at the very heart of paganism. The serpent was proclaiming that Eve could become deified, and God was trying to keep the status of deity only for Himself.
The temptation was put forward that Adam and Eve could be deified--like god--themselves. Then the distinction between God and man is erased, and with that the distinction between man and woman is erased, leading to androgyny. Mircea Eliade, one of the more significant scholars of pagan thought, explains that androgyny connection this way. Referencing the chaos of Genesis 1:1-3, he informs that paganism seeks to return to:
...a symbolic restoration of Chaos, of the undifferentiated unity that preceded the Creation…[where] all contraries are collapsed. The distinctions between the sexes are erased: the two merge into an androgynous whole.
In other words, the Creator God is erased and replaced with creation as the ultimate deity. (see Romans 1:21-23) Paganism has consistently held out that its chief representative, the priest, be emasculated and androgynous. For example, androgynous priests were associated with the worship of the goddess Ishtar from the Sumerian age (1800 BC). This was a reflection of Ishtar who herself had transformed his masculinity into femininity. The pagan religions of ancient Canaan maintain a similar view as the goddess Anat who is headstrong and submits to no one. She is both young and nubile but also a bearded soldier representing the androgynous idea. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, Cybele possessed both male and female anatomy, making her intersexed. The priesthood of Cybele were cross-gendered eunuchs.
The OT gives some indication that Canaanite religion included androgyny, against which Israel was to guard.
A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this. (Deuteronomy 22:5)
Old Testament scholar Jason DeRouchie comments on this verse:
In...loving others and God means that people will maintain a gender identity that aligns with their biological sex and will express this gender in a way that never leads to gender confusion in the eyes of others. We should always be able to distinguish boys from girls, and girls from boys. When our biological sex aligns with our gender identity and our gender expression, we express love for both God and our neighbor.
The Solution
So, what do we do?
Establish a biblical definition and understanding of masculinity. This means we have to start with God and not men. Men are created in the image of God and are to reflect that image. The next article will seek to provide that definition.
Establish a pathway to discipleship and recovery. When society and culture routinely belittles masculinity, then women will be perpetually stuck with boys who have no incentive to grow up and honor their commitments and responsibilities. Boys who fail to launch do not become the kind of men who rise to the challenge of becoming trustworthy husbands and fathers. When this happens on a large scale, there is irreparable suffering and damage to women, children and society as a whole. Men tend to live up to the expectations placed on them. The church, through Jesus Christ, has a momentous opportunity to call men to step up to the challenge to:
Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. (1 Corinthians 16:13)
The next articles in this series will address this pathway.
Comments