Dear M,
I don't consider watching sports a necessary prerequisite to manhood.
Depending on the sport, playing them is more like it. I consider knowing sports stats and
knowing Pokemon stats to be exactly the same man-stat. So for those
of you who keep calling my Man Card into question every time not watching football comes up, here are a list of things I think make a man
really manly, and sometimes even godly. I fit a good chunk of these, but
I want to fit them all.
1) Diagnosing and fixing your own car, or building or remodeling a house
2) Being the leader of an effective, ass-kicking, money-making team, or a military unit.
3) Having muscles
4) Being well-versed in philosophy, history, economics, theology, law, or politics
5) Being able to take punches, literally and metaphorically, and give them
6) Running into danger when people need your help
7) Catching flying objects when they're coming at your face without flinching
8) Publicly admitting the police, 99% of the time, are useless in an emergency, and opting to be your family's first armed line of defense
9) Appreciating the Old Testament
10) Keeping a cool head when the public is going hysterical for some cause, and even going against it
11) Knowing the difference between telling the truth and running your mouth
12) Admitting when you're wrong*
An objection might be made here. Can't a woman run a kick-ass business, or be familiar with Plutarch or Schopenhauer, or turn a robber into Swiss cheese? Yes, alongside some others listed here, and I would argue she'd be more of a woman. The people who misunderstand me here forget the opposite of a man isn't a woman. A man who fails to be a man doesn't become a woman. He never distinguishes himself from the boys. The eternal fight of manhood is a fight not to distinguish yourself from the does, but as superior to the fawns and the other young bucks. This is how you get the best does and make the best fawns.
Your father,
-J
PS: The things listed above are mostly different, i think, from raw, physical masculinity. But raw and physical masculinity isn't something to be left out. Country music is in fact the last scene in these United States, barring some strains of Christian worship, where a baritone sounds right at home -- and this I think is a great part of its appeal. A woman who goes to a country show sees a man, much of the time, who sounds like the fields or a river or the mountains, has stubble, tights jeans, and gives the vibe that he could walk off the stage and immediately get someone pregnant. This puts him in overt superiority to pop music and its gay and scrawny eunuchs -- usually left-wing men who look like they either smell, or have a disease, or are from the ghetto, or from outer space.
I theorize a good country singer is to modern masculinity-starved women like catnip; and his voice and lyrics are so soothing they're willing to overlook the banality of the instruments. There's no famous drummer like Neil Pert in country, and no guitarist known for his fingerwork like Angus Young. In country there's the singer, the whole singer, and nothing but the singer.
At country shows you might not be guaranteed anything revolutionary, but because of this reliance on high testosterone and an overwhelmingly sturdy, almost obvious sound, the kinds of women country attracts are many times top-notch for homemaking. Every kind of soul has its own vibe. Nearly every high-quality woman I've ever dated in my life has been a country music fan, and nearly all of these have gone on to make children, and run a good home. They tend to be warm and natural and sexually attractive and have long hair. I've met plenty of other women who've liked other music and turned out alright; but the ones who love sad lyrics and chest hair are the ones you want on a warm summer night. (It could be argued, on the other hand, according to country's lyrics, that these women will ruin you).
In the Christian arena, where the majority of women look forward to breeding and are thus the best kind for breeding, you can catch much of the same from the likes of Jeremy Camp. It's because the women there, however much they come across as prudish, are in tune with their more primal desires. My guess is that in Germany, the only other country I'm aware of where a bass singer gets serious airplay, the biggest fans of Heino were the women who had thick thighs, blonde braids, and looked best in a dirndl.
*One of the finest things about me, I think, is my ability to apologize. Because I have the spark of life in me I'm wrong frequently and embarrassingly, and when I am I take the initiative -- and quickly**. I expect mistakes out of myself and from others. I'm ready to forgive and ready for forgiveness. I have yet to deny anyone who apologizes. My anger is swift and brutal but I can end it in an instant. I know of nobody, except the serial offender and the lost cause and the non-apologist, whom I've left behind for dead.
Thus one of the worst things to me about feminists is their insistence that women, like men, shouldn't have to apologize. A man who screws up through his own fault and refuses to admit it might be a man, but he's bad at it. He takes no responsibility for himself and his actions, the crucial and obvious foundation of all manhood. He sees the bridge of all trust and social progress and he burns it. A woman who refuses to apologize so she can be equal with men is much worse than a bad man. She's a moron modeling herself blindly after the worst men. She claims all men as her equals, but she makes the jackass her leader.
**A recent example is the other day when Kobe died. Someone at work said it was sad and I said that it wasn't. Thinking of a whole slew of useless, mindless ballers, I'd made the argument that much better men had died this year, and obscurely, and we shouldn't waste our energy mourning strangers who played sports. The next day I was treated to a slew of evidence that Kobe wasn't just a rando who played sports, but a devout Catholic, a solid family man, and a hard-working, good-exampling all-star American. So I went back to this coworker and told him I'm an assclown. I had judged a great man because he played in the company of ne'er-do-wells and nincompoops and professional jugglers. I'm right that we put too much stock in sports. But we never put too much stock in Kobe -- or in Pat Tillman.
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 |
| Smiling on the front lines |
1) Diagnosing and fixing your own car, or building or remodeling a house
2) Being the leader of an effective, ass-kicking, money-making team, or a military unit.
3) Having muscles
4) Being well-versed in philosophy, history, economics, theology, law, or politics
5) Being able to take punches, literally and metaphorically, and give them
6) Running into danger when people need your help
7) Catching flying objects when they're coming at your face without flinching
8) Publicly admitting the police, 99% of the time, are useless in an emergency, and opting to be your family's first armed line of defense
9) Appreciating the Old Testament
10) Keeping a cool head when the public is going hysterical for some cause, and even going against it
11) Knowing the difference between telling the truth and running your mouth
12) Admitting when you're wrong*
An objection might be made here. Can't a woman run a kick-ass business, or be familiar with Plutarch or Schopenhauer, or turn a robber into Swiss cheese? Yes, alongside some others listed here, and I would argue she'd be more of a woman. The people who misunderstand me here forget the opposite of a man isn't a woman. A man who fails to be a man doesn't become a woman. He never distinguishes himself from the boys. The eternal fight of manhood is a fight not to distinguish yourself from the does, but as superior to the fawns and the other young bucks. This is how you get the best does and make the best fawns.
Your father,
-J
PS: The things listed above are mostly different, i think, from raw, physical masculinity. But raw and physical masculinity isn't something to be left out. Country music is in fact the last scene in these United States, barring some strains of Christian worship, where a baritone sounds right at home -- and this I think is a great part of its appeal. A woman who goes to a country show sees a man, much of the time, who sounds like the fields or a river or the mountains, has stubble, tights jeans, and gives the vibe that he could walk off the stage and immediately get someone pregnant. This puts him in overt superiority to pop music and its gay and scrawny eunuchs -- usually left-wing men who look like they either smell, or have a disease, or are from the ghetto, or from outer space.
I theorize a good country singer is to modern masculinity-starved women like catnip; and his voice and lyrics are so soothing they're willing to overlook the banality of the instruments. There's no famous drummer like Neil Pert in country, and no guitarist known for his fingerwork like Angus Young. In country there's the singer, the whole singer, and nothing but the singer.
At country shows you might not be guaranteed anything revolutionary, but because of this reliance on high testosterone and an overwhelmingly sturdy, almost obvious sound, the kinds of women country attracts are many times top-notch for homemaking. Every kind of soul has its own vibe. Nearly every high-quality woman I've ever dated in my life has been a country music fan, and nearly all of these have gone on to make children, and run a good home. They tend to be warm and natural and sexually attractive and have long hair. I've met plenty of other women who've liked other music and turned out alright; but the ones who love sad lyrics and chest hair are the ones you want on a warm summer night. (It could be argued, on the other hand, according to country's lyrics, that these women will ruin you).
 |
| Let us all thank God for the dirndl |
*One of the finest things about me, I think, is my ability to apologize. Because I have the spark of life in me I'm wrong frequently and embarrassingly, and when I am I take the initiative -- and quickly**. I expect mistakes out of myself and from others. I'm ready to forgive and ready for forgiveness. I have yet to deny anyone who apologizes. My anger is swift and brutal but I can end it in an instant. I know of nobody, except the serial offender and the lost cause and the non-apologist, whom I've left behind for dead.
Thus one of the worst things to me about feminists is their insistence that women, like men, shouldn't have to apologize. A man who screws up through his own fault and refuses to admit it might be a man, but he's bad at it. He takes no responsibility for himself and his actions, the crucial and obvious foundation of all manhood. He sees the bridge of all trust and social progress and he burns it. A woman who refuses to apologize so she can be equal with men is much worse than a bad man. She's a moron modeling herself blindly after the worst men. She claims all men as her equals, but she makes the jackass her leader.
**A recent example is the other day when Kobe died. Someone at work said it was sad and I said that it wasn't. Thinking of a whole slew of useless, mindless ballers, I'd made the argument that much better men had died this year, and obscurely, and we shouldn't waste our energy mourning strangers who played sports. The next day I was treated to a slew of evidence that Kobe wasn't just a rando who played sports, but a devout Catholic, a solid family man, and a hard-working, good-exampling all-star American. So I went back to this coworker and told him I'm an assclown. I had judged a great man because he played in the company of ne'er-do-wells and nincompoops and professional jugglers. I'm right that we put too much stock in sports. But we never put too much stock in Kobe -- or in Pat Tillman.
Like these essays? Email me at letterssubscription@gmail.com and start your subscription today.
Support the Letters by sending a gift to paypal.me/supporttheletters or www.venmo.com/TheLetters
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