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books, culture, insanitybytes, love, men and women, opinion, relationships, romance
I read this little e book, “In Defense of Women” by H. L. Mencken the other day. It’s an elegantly written little book, with a certain amount of charm and a pleasant cadence. I am all about the language, the rhythm and the music of the words and I was delighted.
It was also somewhat humorous, this for example, “A man’s women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow.”
There are elements of truth there, although I do believe the author underestimates the depth of love that women have for men, the patience and tolerance we often show for their foibles. Men do tend to think highly of themselves and women do tend idolize men…..but then reality comes crashing down on us all and we realize we are only human after all. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. I often speak of how women call men to their higher selves, a tricky balancing act for women indeed because, with few exceptions, we aren’t stupid. We may see Batman’s potential, but also see the “actual man within” at the same time.
He goes on to say, “This shrewd perception of masculine bombast and make-believe, this acute understanding of man as the eternal tragic comedian, is at the bottom of that compassionate irony which paces under the name of the maternal instinct. A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an amiable environment, his touching self-delusion.”
Again, elements of truth there, although most women I know do not really want to mother men, it is more like a compulsion, blurred lines, maternal instinct crossing with romantic love. Very few women enjoy this for long periods of time, men as helpless, tragic comedians in need of mothering becomes an emotional burden that can breed resentment and kill romance. No one really wants to have a long-term relationship with a puppy dog or a man-child.
There is quite a bit packed into this little book, some I rather disagree with, some that made me laugh outright, but I’ve just highlighted two concepts that I speak frequently of, two things that tend to erode relationships, women’s weaknesses, if you will. The culture has jumped on the bandwagon too, and some men have been influenced negatively and learned to play off these two cultural errors.
The first is the idea that man is an ass, a bit of a buffoon and definitely incompetent. Slightly stupid really, and unable to function without a woman around. TV sitcoms are full of this, as are commercials. It isn’t true and it’s also rather unhealthy because it infantalizes men. If you are proven incompetent no one ever expects anything of you. The problem being women will then pick up the emotional weight…..and with it the accompanying resentment. Disrespect sets in and then often outright contempt. It’s a double whammy becasue women often feel no attraction to men we have no respect for and men generally do not feel loved if they do not have our respect. When we perceive a man as a buffoon, we kill our own desire. When we can not express our admiration for him, we kill his love.
Mothering and maternal instinct goes along with having an incompetent buffoon around. As women we are designed to mother the helpless, the pitful, to create that amiable environment for our young. The problem being, we are also designed to not feel attracted to or the least bit romantically interested in the object of our nurturing. If a man is too needy, maternal instinct will kick in and romantic love will flee.
There are several things in this book that I do not endorse, that gave me pause, but all in all it was an enjoyable read, taken all in good humor and with a grain of salt. Towards the end he says, “Women may emancipate themselves, they may borrow the whole bag of masculine tricks, and they may cure themselves of their present desire for the vegetable security of marriage, but they will never cease to be women, and so long as they are women they will remain provocative to men. Their chief charm today lies precisely in the fact that they are dangerous, that they threaten masculine liberty and autonomy, that their sharp minds present a menace vastly greater than that of acts of God and the public enemy—and they will be dangerous for ever. Men fear them, and are fascinated by them. They know how to show their teeth charmingly; the more enlightened of them have perfected a superb technique of fascination. It was Nietzsche who called them the recreation of the warrior—not of the poltroon, remember, but of the warrior. “
Works for me. Just remember to be wise in how you conduct your warfare.
Paul said:
I know that what you say is true IB – I see it daily around me. That said, it is a destructive perspective to relationships. Nothing turns me off more than a woman (or anyne for that matter) who disrespects me. And once i sense that disrespect – be it passive/aggressive, or eyerolling or anything in between- I put up an unassailable wall between us. And i do not wish to even see what is on the other side of that wall and all possibilities of repairing the relationship are lost. You can tell me I’m wrong, I’m lazy, I’m clumsy, or many other negatives and I am fine with that (most is true – Ha!). But when you no linger respect me – that is to say that no good an ever comes from our association, then I am gone permanently.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Yes, my husband says the same thing. It’s really fascinating to me because many women don’t walk that way in the world, it’s almost like a foreign language. Kind of sad actually, but girls often don’t know what respect even is. We tend to seek something more akin to safety, perhaps kindness. I was talking to some young girls the other day and that truth really came through once again. There was this teen age guy doing all sorts of antics on his skate board, tossing a few jokes their way, seeking attention. I mentioned respect, he’s trying to win your respect, and the girls looked at me like I was plumb crazy. It was funny, they looked completely blank, as if to say, “why in the world would he want our respect?” Mating rituals girls, it’s a mating ritual, but of course I didn’t say that because I didn’t want to have to explain farther. 🙂
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Paul said:
Bwahaha! You’re like me in that you see everything as hooked together – I too sometimes just stop conversations because of where I know they will end up. ha!
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Paul said:
As an aside IB, I just did a guest post over at Cordelia’s Mom’s. I would be honored if you had the time to drop by. Thank you. https://cordeliasmomstill.com/2016/06/11/youre-insane-guest-post-by-paul-curran/comment-page-1/#comment-17509
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Julie said:
The rhythm of words, me too!
I’ve heard it said before that men are secretly terrified of their wives. I don’t think the hub is scared of me, but he does realize that I am way smarter than him in ways he can’t touch. Of course he has his giftedness, too.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Ahh, the rhythm of words! Isn’t that the best thing since sliced bread?
I think all the best men realize women have a kind of intelligence that is definitely different from their own. Not better or worse, but we can see things in the world in ways they cannot. The reverse is true too. So when we can combine the two with some harmony, we have half a chance of surviving 🙂
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Fromscratchmom said:
I love the way you put that, IB! Yes. It’s different. And that’s why we are good for them and they are good for us. Er…at least I still think it’s possibly true that some of them are truly good. *insert self-effacing humor here* 😉
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Julie said:
Exactly!
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Fromscratchmom said:
I find it fascinating to read of others’ perceptions and challenges. So many women comment on blogs and elsewhere that feeling like his mother is the death of their ability to be attracted to him, which makes a certain sense to me. But I rarely felt like his mom or suffered that challenge. Perhaps his hostility prevented it as it prevented so many things. All that leads me to hypothesize about my feeling unsafe and unloved bearing a certain correlation to the mothering feeling other women experience. There are many things that hostility kills that we also would not be inspired to by our children or might even be incapable of experiencing from our interactions with our children and our actions on their behalf. We are not made to feel safe or protected or cared for by the children we nurture. The profound bonding we feel with our children is no less significant but still very different from the deep deep connection we felt with our husbands when we chose to marry.
I also can’t remember thinking of him as a pathetic clown or a bumbling idiot. I thought he was wrong plenty of times, but not stupid. I’ve always seen that image, as it’s often portrayed in popular culture, offensive and unsexy in the extreme. So I hypothesize that cultural influence that impacts women and contributes to them seeing their husbands that way or influences men to emulate that caricature is having a devastating impact on marriage in our culture. I did think my husband followed the culture towards intellectual laziness and a whole giant load of staying disconnected from family relationships which was certainly just as damaging. He thought I had no respect for him. But I realize now there were many reasons why that were not even remotely the same as me actually not respecting him.
…rambling thoughts…I’m at work and my students break is over any moment now…back to teaching teens about driver fitness!
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Fromscratchmom said:
Maybe I should have said eventually came to think of…intellectual and emotional laziness… Oh well, there were many negative once everything was so broken that we needed help to repair…
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insanitybytes22 said:
“…back to teaching teens about driver fitness!”
LOL! You are so brave! 🙂
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xPraetorius said:
Wonderful as usual, IB. One quick remark. It strikes me that you could have the very same book written by H.L. Menckenette, called “In Defense of Men,” and that would say exactly the same things except switching the sex of the observer and the observed, and the genders of all the nouns and pronouns — and it would contain the exact same amount of truth and non-truth, wisdom and folly.
I’m amazed a the plainly silly misconceptions each sex has about the other. For example, it’s a simple truth to say that “out there” is the idea that women are filled with hidden insights and wisdom about men, while men are perfectly clueless about women.
One hears from women generalizations about how men think and feel that are the silliest possible things. Things the women couldn’t possibly know, yet which are stated simply as fact. Things which, if a man were to say the same thing about women, would result in vein-popping outrage, filed with “How dare you?!?‘s” and “Who do you think you are!?!‘s” and “How could you possibly know!?!‘s”
Phrases like, “Well, what do you expect? He’s a man.” or “He’s just a man, how would he know,” or what I hear all the time, “You’re just a man, how could you know?” are rampant.
Imagine the reverse: “Well what do you expect? She’s a woman.” Or, “She’s just a woman, how would she know?” Or, “You’re just a woman, how could you know?”
Needless to say, you almost never hear those expressions in public. They can cost you your job, your social standing, and even your ability to find another job!
Men think those things too, but almost never vocally — again, because of the societal state-of-mind, and the social pressures mentioned above. What’s wrong is just as wrong, though, and what’s silly just as silly, even if it remains unstated.
Men and women do have many common emotional and intellectual characteristics of their group. Some of them are good and some of them less good. However, each person chooses in what measure he or she will adopt each of those characteristics of the group, and is so doing makes himself perfectly unique within the group. What a shame that we don’t — all men and women — recognize that uniqueness as the very first understanding we have of a new acquaintance and them allow him or her to reveal himself to us over subsequent meetings.
It was Einstein, I think, who said that to abandon generalization is to abandon knowledge, but one can be way too reliant on generalization too. And one can allow generalization to stifle understanding, when the generalization is simply incorrect as it pertains to an individual. We have so much of that in society today. It’s such a shame.
Your essay is so wonderfully insightful, and shows how clear-eyed and intelligent an observer you are of things around you. A great, thought-provoking read, as always!
Best,
— x
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xPraetorius said:
Apologies for the typos in the comment. It was written in haste, as I was in a lull in helping my daughter with boyfriend problems! How’s that for irony?!?
Best,
— x
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insanitybytes22 said:
What a great comment! You are quite right, culturally we’re living in a world where men are not allowed to speak the truth about women, even their own subjective truth. I think that’s why I read people like H. L. Mencken, 1918, back in the day when men and women could actually talk to one another. Of course, he took some flack for his opinions then too, but the environment was different, not the same policing, outrage, and political correctness. There is great value in having these conversations, even when men and women are completely wrong about one another, simply being able to share our perceptions is not only a pleasant pursuit, but it can lead to greater wisdom.
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xPraetorius said:
Thanks, IB! What you say is so true.
If we’re wrong about something, and we can never state that about which we’re wrong, then we can’t ever receive the criticism our belief needs to hear!
This is what is meant when it’s said that censorship — which is what political correctness really is — “drives beliefs underground.”
Well, of course! If you never hear it, you can’t argue against it! And you can’t demonstrate its folly!
Censorship is almost always an indication that the censor is not secure in the strength of his or her ideas.
In this case, that insecurity seems richly deserved.
Best,
— x
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"A" dad said:
Ephesians 5
28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[c] 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Memi, perhaps the most compelling thing about Mencken’s writing on this topic, is his description about the lack of respect of men, by women, in a presumably worldly context.
In a worldly and non-marital context, lack of respect for someone might be justified, if the person had worked hard to earn any lack of respect they were given.
In a godly marital context, love and respect are required of the husband and wife. (respecitvely!)
It’s funny what a hard sell this requirement is, within the “church”.
Perhaps this requirement is misapplied to contexts other than marriage, and hence the resistance.
One thing for husbands to consider is that God Himself came to earth for His bride.
God was not given universal respect by his bride, but His love was constant anyway, even in the rebukes He leveled.
Perhaps the take-away for husbands is, a lack of respect on the part of one’s wife may be tough,
but love on the part of the husband is still required.
What “love” might look like in tough marital situations, is admittedly, a whole other story.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Oh, amen, I love your comment. It really is amazing what a tough sell this can be! I suppose seeing respect abused and exploited has contaminated the whole issue for many and left a bad taste.
You are so right however, husbands are to love their wives and wives are to respect their husbands and one is not dependent on the other. We have to try to respect husbands even when we don’t feel it, and the same is true of husbands loving their disrespectful wives. We do these things because they are pleasing to God and because they tend to deliver us the best results within our marriages. Women can respect their husbands into love and men can love their wives into respect. It’s not easy, that’s for sure, but I’ve seen it happen enough to know it is possible. But ultimately, we are seeking God’s favor first and if our spouse comes around too, that is just icing on the cake. 🙂
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"A" dad said:
Memi / host, and others.
I would “Like” many comments on this blog, but it seems like I can’t log on to, or activate the “Like” feature.
Anyway, thanks everyone for your comments and conversation.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Thank you for your comments and conversation and thank you for The Word, for His word.
Likes are turned on here but I suspect you cannot access them without a wordpress account. You can start one or not if you prefer. Regardless, your comments are always appreciated.
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Fromscratchmom said:
I too would “like” comments. But I seem to have failed at creating a new account or perhaps at remembering an old account or some such thing. I’m kind of a Luddite. 😉
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