Dear Hannah*,
I haven’t seen any pictures, but I’ve been told that when my grandpa
was a baby, he used to wear a fluffy dress. Now, my grandpa wasn’t a
sissy; he actually turned out to be a very muscular, very virile, very
rugged machinist, and he happened to get a woman pregnant before he was
even married to her (a woman who became my grandma). But the reason that
I mention his wearing a dress as a boy, is because nobody was ever
concerned during those days that making him wear a little dress was
going to in any way make him effeminate or give him gender confusion.
Today, making a baby boy wear a dress would either arouse a healthy
amount of laughter or a deep sense of concern; yesterday, that is how we
dressed a good portion, if not all, of our soon-to-be warriors,
machinists, preachers, and neighborhood grocers.
I’m not suggesting that we should in any way begin buying our
little boys pink bows and tutus, but it is of particular interest that
things such as fluffy dresses may be thought of as acceptable clothing
for a boy one year, and the next be a laughing matter, and that in
certain parts of the world, a man may wear what very closely amounts to a
night-gown during the day and in public, and never have his manhood
called into question. At the very least, we can conclude that much of
what may be considered manly or gender appropriate is malleable — not
that manliness and effeminacy are matters entirely of subjectivity, or
that they are entirely meaningless, but that there are different ways of
expressing them symbolically, and that each are valid so long as they
remain within the bounds of justice (unlike those barbarians who prove
their manhood by killing innocents). In other words, I wouldn’t dare
call my great-grandfather — whom I’ve heard was a very mean, tough man —
a sissy, for dressing grandpa like a baby girl; and I wouldn't suggest
that making a young boy wear a dress back then would have an effect on
whether he later thought he was a woman. Depending upon the time and
the location, wearing a “dress” can mean something entirely different.
Being a coward or a sissy are always the same.
This isn’t the only aspect in which human traditions and meanings
vary wildly while maintaining legitimacy. If we consider language, we
oftentimes have different words for the same ideas, and across multiple
languages, we find that the same sounds sometimes mean different
things. Yet simply because the sound of an idea differs,
doesn’t mean the idea doesn’t exist, or is in some way perverted; people
simply have different ways of expressing things which are commonly
known to humanity. And it is only sensible to say that certain ideas may be communicated
by other methods as well. George Washington — and even Puritans such
as John Owens and Richard Baxter — wore long hair as a matter of style;
Nazirites wore theirs long as a matter of religious devotion; in the
Apostle Paul’s day, men wore long hair to be effeminate. Some men shave
their heads as a sign of mourning; others wear it to show that they
hate foreigners, or that they are sober.
There is a great difference, of course, between admitting different symbolic expressions
of different valid ideas, and denying that expressions are valid
altogether. And this is worth saying because there are certain men in
America today who aren’t content with understanding what men mean by
certain things, which would be a healthy and sensible thing to do, and
would much rather get rid of ideas like gender and class altogether,
which is immoral and insensible. There's a great difference between
giving a baby boy a dress and telling him that he can choose to be a
woman, just like there's a great difference between giving a little boy
a military uniform and telling him he’s Napoleon, or pretending that no
such thing as thuggish clothing and mannerisms exist, or that because
people live in the same house and have sex with one another, that they
are family. And if we're judicious enough to ponder exactly how we
give certain meanings to certain things, and yet know that these
meanings exist because we have willed their existence, then that is one
thing. But to say that men today may wear wedding gowns with one
another, and that it means nothing because that meaning is
imaginary, isn’t to deny differing forms of communication, but to deny one very natural romantic principle and another obvious hygienic one: that men ought to be manly, and that anal sex is never a good idea. In other words, we give meaning to gestures and sounds; once we
know what those things mean, we have a duty to respond appropriately
with either disgust, indifference, or with praise.
Wisdom requires that we question our judgments before we pass them
entirely: occasionally we encounter men who feign status by adorning
themselves with symbols for manliness and virtue and wealth and success,
and these men are known as poseurs; and other times we encounter men
who symbolize something accidentally, and are mistaken for something
they aren’t. The former kind of man is a danger to society, because he
willingly claims something which he has no business claiming (think of
all the times we’ve seen tattoos on sissies),
and the latter man deserves an excuse. And when too many have claimed
something which isn’t theirs, or accidentally stumbled into something
they didn’t mean, it’s only fair to question the legitimacy and use of
the symbol. But this is only because of abuse or lack of
communicability, not because symbols shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Today there exists a kind of man who believes so strongly in
individuality, that he forgets methods of expression must be common, and
they must be respected: there is no speech without consensus, and there
is no society without speech. This kind of man likes to pretend that
other people are judgmental and backward simply because he expresses
himself poorly, and then demands that everyone conform themselves to
whatever he feels like doing, as though by doing so, he were acting in
favor of liberty, and not presenting his neighbors with an entirely new
master. This kind of man believes himself above the herd, but he’s
actually beneath good sense; and when we hear men challenging our methods
of expression, we should remind ourselves that there are two
different kinds of men who do so: the ones who are challenging others to
maintain good communication or change the means of communicating valid
principles, and the ones who challenge universal principles because they hate
them. To be in the former category is to be human, and sometimes even
to be a great man. To be in the latter category is to be a barbarian.
The way we express association with a lifestyle or a virtue can
change, but virtue is always the same. The methods of expressing
effeminacy may be different one year from the next — but we must always
disapprove of men being sissies. The ways Christians dress and sing may
always change — but their expression of humility, reverence, and
Godliness must always remain the same. We may not always agree that
baby boys should wear fluffy dresses — but we should always agree that
boys are boys and girls are girls, and that they must act differently in
respect of themselves, their partners, society, and God. We may
express these virtues differently; and to phrase it in the most ironic
way possible, we must express them all the same.
Your father,
-J
*This essay of mine was published at The Imaginative Conservative, and is a kind of counterpoint to my other essay Homeschoolers and Gay Lovers, which was recently published on The American Thinker. It'll help broaden the issue of behavioral patterns and ideological belonging -- which needs a little more writing than a single essay can furnish. I hope you enjoy it.
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