- ('Mensch' is Yiddish for a man)
-
- When I was 21 years old, and living in Israel, I received
a letter from my mother. She had taken my savings and invested in a town
house.
-
- "Now, you are a mensch," she said.
-
- I wondered what she meant.
-
- How did owning a house make me "a man?" I wanted
to be defined by my character, not by my property.
-
- I came of age at a time when youth was "looking
for identity." I was searching for it in Israel. Later, I became a
Canadian nationalist. In each case, I didn't find identity in "community."
-
- I had a strong patriarchal father, an excellent role
model. He built a successful career, and supported a family. "Work
is the backbone of a man," he would tell me. "It's the most important
decision a man makes. A wife is the second most important."
-
- But for some reason, his example didn't register. Why
didn't it?
-
- For centuries men have defined their identities in terms
of masculinity. Why was I so clueless?
-
- I was a feminist.
-
-
- ATTACK ON GENDER AND FAMILY
-
-
- I grew up in an era that has bought the feminist lie
that men and women are identical. In our culture, women are encouraged
to do everything men do, and vice versa. I believe in equal opportunity
but I mistook "equal" for "identical", and this retarded
my personal development by 25 years. I doubt if I am alone.
-
- "Identical" made me look for for myself in
a mate. I was literally attracted to lithe young women with cropped boyish
haircuts: my own persona.
-
- Thus, I put a woman on a pedestal because she had my
identity. She could give it back to me. Some women were immediately repelled.
Others enjoyed the adulation for a while, but eventually lost respect.
-
- What I needed was someone quite different from me, my
feminine complement.
-
- Eventually feminism will be recognized for what it is:
a virulently anti social, anti-feminine, anti heterosexual ideology that
has achieved extraordinary power by pretending to champion women's rights.
By fooling society, they have been able to enact policies which emasculate
men and encourage women to become masculine. In other words, women have
usurped the masculine identity, and in the process, both sexes have lost
their own.
-
- Unbelievably, the destruction of heterosexuality is the
stated goal of feminists who believe gender difference is not only unnatural
but also the source of all injustice. Most people don't realize that the
current feminist movement is an anachronism from the Cold War and the
Marxist revolutionary sixties.
-
- Most of the leading feminist thinkers, including Betty
Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir, have been Marxists, and many have also
been lesbians. But they would not have succeeded if they had been up front
about their bizarre revolutionary goal, which is to destroy healthy heterosexual
behavior and the family.
-
- Feminism is about power not choice. "No women should
be authorized to stay at home and raise her children," said feminist
founder Simone de Beauvoir. "Women should not have that choice, because
if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one" (/Saturday
Review/, June 14, 1975). If feminism were really about choices, it would
not indoctrinate women to enter the work force and become "independent."
It would not demonize men and heterosexual love.
-
- Feminism is essentially a lesbian movement in the sense
that lesbians have always been women who coveted the male role. It is based
on Marxist notions of "equality" and class conflict that have
been discredited and rejected, notions that have no relevance to a mystical
and biological reality such as love.
-
- The breakdown in the traditional family caused by feminism,
is quite simply, the main reason for our social, personal and existential
problems. People have always derived their primary meaning and purpose
from familial roles (e.g. daughter, wife, and mother) and from the life-cycle
rituals, (marriage, birth and death). Indeed, marriage and family are a
God-given Path to achieve love and personal fulfillment.
-
- We do not find wholeness by trying to incorporate masculine
and feminine in ourselves but by uniting with our opposite. Heterosexual
love is the attraction of opposites. Indeed, as heterosexuals we define
themselves in terms of these differences. If we are male, we are not female,
and vice-versa, like dark and light. Because I denied these differences,
I didn't know who I was. I didn't understand women, and I didn't know
how to relate to them.
-
-
- RECLAIMING MASCULINITY
-
- I was almost 50-years-old before I solved the riddle.
A book "The Flight from Woman" (1964) by Karl Stern, a prominent
Canadian psychiatrist, confirmed what my instincts were telling me. My
mother had been right all along. A man makes the house; the woman makes
the home.
-
- According to Stern, masculinity is defined by "power"
over the natural and social environment. Men provide the physical and cultural
context for the private world of love. They are the do'ers: adventurers
and builders, protectors and providers.
-
- Femininity is defined by "loving relationships."
Feminine psychology is founded on nurturing and loving husbands and children,
and thereby being needed and loved in return. Women are the engines of
love, acting much like the heart in the body. They create the family that
is the fundamental building block of society and the foundry of the future.
-
- Men define themselves by deeds; women simply are love:
beauty, grace, faith and goodness. Men tend to be rational and objective;
women subjective, intuitive and emotional. Distinctions like these need
not constrict us. They are a theme upon which to play our own variations.
For example, my wife mows the lawn; I do all the shopping and cooking.
But without the theme, there is confusion and chaos.
-
- The feminist gospel that traditional sex roles are "oppressive"
is typical Marxist social subversion. For many people, a flexible interpretation
of traditional roles may be essential for happiness and fulfillment.
-
- I extrapolated from Karl Stern's distinctions. If man
is motivated by power and woman by love, heterosexual love must be an exchange
of the two.
-
- A woman surrenders her power, in trust. This is how a
woman expresses her love: by trusting. In this way, women actually empower
men. If a man betrays this trust, he loses his power.
-
- In return for her power, a woman gets what she really
wants: a man's power expressed as his intense, undivided love.
-
- He includes her in his sphere of self-interest: this
is how two people become one. Her happiness is his happiness. He can't
hurt her without hurting himself.
-
-
- RECLAIMING FEMININITY
-
-
- Teaching women to seek masculine power prevents them
from getting what they really want.
-
- Women want to be possessed by a man's love. God's love
of Creation is mirrored in a man's love of a woman. A girlfriend once told
me, "I want to be used." In a way, a man channels God's love
to a woman by making her a wife and (possibly) a mother. Women want masculine
power, but it must be in a man. The same girlfriend also said that without
a man, she feels "like a rudderless boat." Similarly, a man
without a woman is a rudder without a boat.
-
- A man cannot love a woman who is competing with him for
power. Relationships between so-called "equals" are like mergers,
or roommates. One psychiatrist, Irene Claremont de Castillejo, calls them
"brother-sister" marriages (/Knowing Women: A Feminine Psychology,
1973/). They cannot achieve the intimacy as when a woman surrenders her
will to a man, and a man returns this trust with his wholehearted love.
Some psychiatrists say her sexual satisfaction is also linked to her ability
to trust and surrender.
-
- Feminine women are creatures of God. In love, they sacrifice
their "selves" for love, which in many religions is the key to
transcendence. Helen Deutsch remarked on this masochist-narcissist syndrome
in her /The Psychology of Women: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation/ (1944).
The majority of women only achieve fulfillment as wives and mothers. In
their hearts, they know it.
-
- Nor can women love men with whom they compete. Women
are hypergamous which means they seek men of higher status than themselves.
Even the most ardent heterosexual feminist only can love someone more powerful
than she.
-
- The struggle for power is poisoning male-female relations.
It is the death of love. Men cannot give up their defining characteristic
and expect to be men. Women cannot criticize and challenge men and expect
to have satisfying relationships. When I comprehended this, I felt liberated.
I established a healthy relationship with a woman who is my female complement,
and married her.
-
-
- CONCLUSION
-
- The universal complaint is that men no longer know how
to be men; women don't know how to be women. It helps to see heterosexual
love as a mystical dance. In a dance, the male leads, the female follows.
You can't have a graceful dance without each partner playing his part.
-
- The dance is based on love. The male is always considering
his mate's wishes because he loves her. In some cases, he will ask her
to lead. As in a ballroom dance, who can say which role is more important.
Both partners are of equal value. The dance requires both the leadership
and dynamism of the male; and the beauty, love and grace of the female.
In the dance of love, two people become one, and the fruit of this mystical
union, is often a child.
-
-
- --
-
- (My first Internet article, from Aug. 2000. Updated April
13 2008)
-
- Henry Makow Ph.D. is the author of "Cruel Hoax:
Feminism and the New World Order." (www.cruelhoax.ca) His articles
can be found at his web site www.henrymakow.com He enjoys receiving your
comments, some of which he posts on his site using first names only. hmakow@gmail.com
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