This is a guest post from Hayden at PersistentIllusion.
Ever since women started, rightly, demanding that America deliver upon the promises on which this country was founded, men have more and more lost their way. Unsure of how to meet a stronger woman, men psychologically retreated in confusion.
We used to think that women were less intelligent than men.
We used to think that women were incapable of protecting themselves.
We used to think that women were only good for taking care of children.
We used to think that women were only good for satisfying a man’s carnal pleasures.
We used to think that women were property.
We, men and women, had operated so long in this paradigm that when women started to shatter those ideologies, exercise their abilities, and assert their substance and strength, we found we didn’t know how to share power. To render equality unto women meant that power was ‘taken away’ from the men of this country.
The ‘manliness’ movement is a triumphant death knell to this either-or dynamic. No longer is it strong women at the expense of strong men. No longer do men withdraw. We are coming to a place, slowly but surely, where men and women can assert themselves without diminishing the authority of their partner.
The manliness movement, including ‘daddy blogging’, is redefining what is considered ‘manly’. Which is more manly? Benching 300 lbs. or being a good father? Is it manly to suppress the power of your wife, or to meet her in equal partnership? Truly which is stronger? A partnership founded on an imbalance of equality, or one that combines the power of two strong people.
Indeed, we have learned in the personal development movement that one’s personal happiness absolutely cannot be dependent upon another for then your ‘happiness’ is shallow and transient. Joy in living is expressed in fullness when two ‘happy’ people come together and magnify their joy through a loving partnership.
So it is also true for power. Power – strength – gained at the expense of another cannot last; it is insubstantial.
The manliness movement is, at its core, an evolution of masculinity. And daddy bloggers are at the forefront. Men today are using the digital marketplace of ideas to exhort their confederates into stepping up. This clarion call reverberates online, bouncing from byte to byte, blog to blog, man to man. It’s a call to arms and a ceasing of bitter refuge.
It’s a challenge to man up.
Women simply cannot effect this change. When a woman tries to prevent a man from shirking responsibility, when she attempts to insists on his equal involvement in their marriage and family, when she declares the injustice of doing it all by herself – she is a ‘nag’ and her husband resents her.
Thanks to the multitude of enlightened men, no longer is there a dearth of material on what it means to be masculine. No longer do we sit without direction. No longer must men flounder. In order to affirm the vision of this country, the resonant promise on which it was founded 232 years ago, women and men must step up.
And, thanks to the manliness movement, men across the country are taking up the mantle of leadership. Stepping forward so that others can more easily see the path of the modern day warrior. Creating a fellowship, a brotherhood, of knights who fight for more than macho self-interest but the possibility of what men and women can truly be for each other – for themselves. Better men inspire better women who will in turn inspire better men…and so on.
The reason for my exultation of the manliness movement? The demand for personal responsibility. The proposition that women are not creatures for disdain-ertainment, but partners to be fervently honored and fiercely cherished. The fulfillment of an idea I had when I was little girl, the dream that men and women could truly be equal.
The truth is this. We are all less when any of us are lessened, diminished when any one of us is second class, and -thusly – are all consummated when we fulfill the promise of our beings. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
