I was a post-war baby-boomer raised in a family in which my mother played a more dominant role than in most other households at that time. This was not a reflection of anything innately lacking in my father, he was badly injured fighting during World War 2 and was left partly disabled as a result, and when we encountered issues that my father struggled to cope with, my mother naturally stepped up and handled things that other women at that time might not have needed to.
My mother was also a highly intelligent woman whose education had been disrupted by the war and her family relocating to the Home Counties and I could sense that she was at times more than a little frustrated that she hadn’t been able to develop a career, at least not until much later in life when the scope for advancement was limited by her age.
Some people may have described her as a bit of a feminist, because she did believe in equal rights and equal opportunities for women and it was a source of some satisfaction to her that she had lived to see Margaret Thatcher become Britain’s first female prime minister. My mother however was not obsessed as feminists are today, with advancing women at all costs — at the expense of men. She believed that girls and boys should have the opportunity of a first class education and unfettered advancement, limited only by their ability, and that both girls and boys should be trained and equipped to cope with the domestic side of life.
As a consequence my mother taught all four of her sons to sew and to knit, just as she taught my sister, and she taught us to cook and clean and keep the house tidy. I was the oldest of her four sons and as my younger brothers were born, I was taught how to hold them, how to dress and undress them safely, how to change their nappies and to feed them. This, to my mother was all part of equipping her sons as well as her daughter to be fully rounded human beings, and there have been several times in my life, I’m pleased to say, when these skills have enabled me to cope in situations in which many other men would have struggled.
When it comes to gender politics, equality before the law and equality of opportunity are all that anyone needs to have a fair crack at life, and to at least achieve something close to their full potential. This would have been my mother’s position and she would at this point have parted company with the modern breed of militant feminist who is obsessed with ‘Wimmin’s issues’, with advancing women by reversing the perceived discrimination that existed in times past, thereby making victims out of men, by denigrating men and masculinity and by conditioning boys to become gender confused, feminised versions of what they might otherwise have become.
My mother for all her belief in the feminist cause, was a traditionalist who recognised that innate biology means that men and women can never lead lives that are exactly the same. Furthermore, even though she might have wanted men to have a sensitive and caring side to their personalities and not to be afraid to show their emotions, she would not have wanted these things at the expense of making submissive ‘lady-boys’ out of our menfolk. She wanted strong, capable, caring and independently minded men to be partners in life with strong, capable, caring and independently minded women, and I believe she was right.
In light of the above, I was intrigued to discover that my grand-daughter has recently been given a book entitled, ‘Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls – 100 Tales of Extra-Ordinary Women’, by authors Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo.
In its promotional blurb, it states, “What if the princess didn’t marry Prince Charming but instead went on to be an astronaut? What if the jealous step sisters were supportive and kind? And what if the queen was the one really in charge of the kingdom?”
“Illustrated by sixty female artists from every corner of the globe, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls introduces us to one hundred remarkable women and their extraordinary lives, from Ada Lovelace to Malala, Amelia Earhart to Michelle Obama. Empowering, moving and inspirational, these are true fairy tales for heroines who definitely don’t need rescuing.”
“To the rebel girls of the world: dream bigger, aim higher, fight harder, and when in doubt, remember you are right!”
Some of the individual women chosen to feature among this hundred are rather questionable as role models in my view, however I do not object in principle to a book such as this providing inspirational bedtime reading for my grand-daughter. Seeing the book however spurred me into thinking which one-hundred high achieving men might feature in the equivalent book for boys? In the interests of natural justice there had to be an equivalent book for boys, … didn’t there?
Today, I Googled to find out and knowing gender politics as I do, I was not completely surprised to find that there isn’t a counterpart for boys written by the same authors. Apparently they are only interested in inspiring girls, and are not concerned about boys. They have even written a second book for girls including another one-hundred high achieving women, but still nothing comparable for boys.
Upon searching further however, I have discovered a book aimed at boys in a similar format, published by Quercus Books a subsidiary of Hodder & Stoughon. This book however is entitled, “Stories for Boys Who Dare to be Different (Gender and Well-Being)” and is written by Ben Brooks with illustrations by Quinton Winter.
The sales blurb states, “Boys need to know that prince charmings and brave hunters are not the only role-models
“In fact, a whole lot of them out there don’t identify with the idea of being a strong, independent, competitive saviour who never cries. As a boy, there is an assumption that you will conform to this stereotypical idea of masculinity, but what if you’re the introvert kind, what if you prefer to pick up a book rather than a sword, what if you’re very sensitive, what if you like the idea of wearing a dress?
“As statistics keep showing that there is an ongoing crisis with regards to young men and mental health, with unhelpful gender stereotypes contributing to this malaise, Stories for Boys Who Dare To Be Different offers a welcome alternative narrative. It is an extraordinary compilation of 100 stories of famous and not-so-famous men from the past to the present day, every single one of them a rule-breaker and innovator in his own way, and all going on to achieve amazing things. Entries include Frank Ocean, Salvador Dali, Rimbaud, Beethoven, Barack Obama, Ai Weiwei and Jesse Owens – different sorts of heroes from all walks of life and from all over the world.
“A beautiful and transporting book packed with stories of adventure and wonderment, it will appeal to those who need the courage to reject peer pressure and go against the grain. It will educate and entertain, while also encourage and inspire.”
Superficially, it would appear to be an equivalent book, but upon closer inspection it is clearly not. The girl’s book is aimed at all girls and provides inspirational role models for all girls, even those who are the mainstream of the next generation. The boy’s book however is primarily aimed at boys who feel alienated from the mainstream, who are other than straight, White and normal, and who either already self-identify or are encouraged to identify with one or more of the minority groups supposedly disadvantaged on the basis of race, religion, or sexuality. Furthermore, whereas the girls one-hundred inspirational individuals are ostensibly wholesome individuals from the point of view of personal habits, the individuals listed in the boys book consist of, for example: Frank Ocean, a Black homosexual R&B artist with a chequered past; Salvadore Dali, a man who created some interesting paintings, but whose other claim to fame is that he died a virgin after a lifetime of compulsive masturbation; Arthur Rimbaud a homosexual poet and sexual libertine, who according to Wikipedia, “led a wild, vagabond-like life spiced by absinthe and hashish”; and the boys from the Isca Academy who rebelled against the gender normal school dress code by going to school in skirts.
There are some admirable White individuals like Stephen Hawking featured in the boys book, but all too often the more wholesome individuals featured are from the ethnic minorities. All in all, this sends out a message to boys who are straight, White and normal that they don’t deserve consideration and that they don’t count unless they strive to improve minority rights or are from one of the, nowadays, genuinely privileged and protected minority groups. Straight, White and normal boys are being airbrushed out of our children’s cultural life and boys are being encouraged to be submissive, substance abusive, perverted and queer.
If we visit the Amazon page advertising Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, we also find in the small adverts a whole host of books aimed at furthering the feminist agenda, again with no comparable books for boys.
On the website, What Children Really Want, Stories for Boys Who Dare to be Different is promoted, with the following strap-lines:
“The girls had ‘Bedtime Stories for Rebel Girls, so now something aimed at the boys…”;
“This wonderful book is a step in the right direction for ‘gender and well-being’”; and
“Gender stereotypes are changing for the better!…”
Yes, gender stereotypes are changing, but that is not what should be happening. If gender equality truly is the aim, limiting stereotypes should be abolished, not changed. The changing of stereotypes merely replaces one limiting stereotype with another, and while the change that books like these represent is positive for girls, the change taking place is distinctly negative as far as boys are concerned.
It is not traditional gender stereotypes that have caused the recent epidemic of delinquency, mental illness and suicides among young men, because this epidemic did not exist fifty years ago. It is the denigration of the male role in society and the disaffection this causes, and the lack of direction and wholesome role models that leads to the despair that many young men currently feel.
The pendulum has most definitely swung too far. We don’t need aggressive feminism that is uncaring of the needs of masculine boys and which promotes submissiveness and dysfunction in our men. As my mother would have said all those years ago, we need ‘strong, capable, caring and independently minded men to be partners in life with strong, capable, caring and independently minded women’ and that can only come from offering boys the same kind of wholesome role models and the same kind of inspiration that we are offering our girls:
Our exhortation to our young should be: “To the rebel children, and especially the rebel White children of the world: dream bigger, aim higher, fight harder, and when in doubt, remember you are right!”
By Max Musson © 2018
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John Stephens
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Well done to your Mother, by all accounts. I have a similar background, however, the whole segregated natural order, has now been blurred by the new “lobby group dictatorship”.
White/Europeans have always respected strong women. Many ancient examples can be found, from Blenda, in the Nordic nations, to Boudicca in Britain.
Strong homes, usually meant strong Mothers, and as such, with the strong, manly balance of the “bread-winner”, a well-rounded set of White, healthy, rosey-cheeked kids, bounced out from rhe home, ready to repeat thw process all over again.
Stefan
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Well we understand where political feminism comes from & is going to, it is also linked to various other “isms” having the same purpose.
The technique has been likened to boiling a frog, slowly turning the heat up until the frog realises too late what is going on.
SerpentSlayer
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Boys, especially white boys are being told how their natural interests and behaviours are wrong from an early age while girls are told to be as insufferable and selfish as possible just as young. Ethnic minorities of all ages are encouraged to hate us and feel entitled by our society. There needs to be a fight back and I believe it is up to all men and women to ensure their sons are told what it is to be a man and a valuable asset to their people.
A countercultural revolution is needed to reverse the effects of leftist poison in our peoplesp minds
Albert
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If Islam takes The West…Woman will be back in The Dark Ages…
DanielS
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Max’s article speaks in terms that could fit in with the recommendations of a post of mine – The Dark Side of Self Actualization & Incommensurate Gender Agendas – https://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/the_dark_side_of_self_actualization_and_incommensurate_gender_agendas#c154389 – In fact he seeks the fair negotiation of gender differentiation and actualization as discussed in that post.
I’m a bit surprised that Musson finishes this paragraph with the following example:
…”what if you’re very sensitive (boy), what if you like the idea of wearing a dress?”
Having heard him before state a recognition that a certain percentage of the population will be homosexual, perhaps the example is meant to provide for that; however, I believe the example is a bit extreme to amplify for the general context. And personally, I would say that the boy should be discouraged from wearing dresses until perhaps he is old enough to recognize that he is, in fact, among the small minority of homos (and that he should still be discouraged from flouting straight gender roles in public. Let him have his costume balls in his queer bar if he must). I base that opinion on the idea that there are probably some percentage of boys who are in the balance, who could go either way if society encouraged them; so that while society should not allow for persecution of homos, understanding the fact that some are hard programmed, the normative, calibrated societal bias should encourage straightness in boys and discourage boys from being homos.
That was a digression from an article that was well measured until that moment.
Max goes on to say:
“It is not traditional gender stereotypes that have caused the recent epidemic in delinquency, mental illness and suicides among young men, because this epidemic did not exist fifty years ago. It is the denigration of the male role in society and the disaffection this causes, and the lack of direction and wholesome role models that leads to the despair that many young men currently feel.”
It is not traditional gender stereotypes that cause these problems in males, but it is the fact that the modernist and traditionalist either/or of the facets of individuation and gender differentiation are not flexible enough to negotiate the post modern circumstance. The topoi my post above discusses are required.
Yes, Max, we need those strong role models for both male and female self actualization. But we also need the grounds that provides for that strength, namely Being/Midtdasein – Being (and being amidst one’s people) that a protectively bounded racial/social group allows – and the further stabilization that respect for routine and sacrament allows.
https://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/the_dark_side_of_self_actualization_and_incommensurate_gender_agendas#c154389
Max Musson
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Hi Daniel, You appear to be under the misapprehension that the words you quote from my article, “… what if you’re very sensitive (boy), what if you like the idea of wearing a dress”, are mine. That is not so, those words come from the sales blurb used to promote the boy’s book. That’s why the paragraph in which they feature is in parentheses, as is the preceding paragraph and the two following paragraphs. These comprise one long quotation made up of four paragraphs.
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I have not yet read the articles to which you link, but I would say that as far as your comments here are concerned, we are completely in agreement.
DanielS
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Sorry for the misunderstanding about the quote, although even with the misunderstanding, I didn’t think you were actually endorsing cross dressing in boys, just unnecessarily provocative in the example. Anyway, thank you for your kind correction of my misunderstanding. And, yes, I see no reason why we should not be in complete agreement. I am delighted by your recognition of that!
Max Musson
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No problem Daniel.
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I have in my life met two people that were transsexuals and another who was a heterosexual cross-dresser. All of them were originally men, and while I sympathise with people who genuinely have a problem with gender identity, my belief is that by trying to change what nature gave them, these people sadly made their situations worse and ended up regretting their actions.
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It is rarely possible in my view for a man to transform his appearance such that he makes a convincing woman. Cross-dressers and transsexuals, the ones I have met in real life and the ones I have seen on TV etc, almost always end up looking like men in dresses, which in essence is what they are, and they become a figure of fun and are often cruelly ridiculed by others. Their friends/relatives need to have the courage to tell them they are making a mistake. If just one tenth of the effort that most transsexuals and cross-dressers exert in trying to be women was devoted to trying to make them feel happier as nature made them, as men, they would lead much fuller and happier lives.
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Someone who is born a woman may feel unhappy or dissatisfied with her life , just as a man may be unhappy or dissatisfied with his, but in neither of these cases can they know what it feels like to be a member of the opposite sex. They may imagine that they know what it feels like, and they may wish that their unhappy lives were different, but they cannot rationally say that they are in the wrong body because they don’t actually know what it is like to be in the body of someone of another sex. This is why so many transsexuals opt to have their sex change surgery reversed in later life, when they realise they have merely transformed from an unhappy man into an unhappy woman. They have ostensibly changed sex but the source of their unhappiness in many cases does not go away.
Alec Suchi
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Feminism has developed into a militant ideology aimed to undermine traditional patriarchal society, while rhetorically claiming fair treatment for women.In practice it has become scornful and dismissive of European men and its influence is all pervading as evidenced in education and drama. Even in the most inconsequential dramas, men are often depicted as ineffectual and even incompetent, while the female counterpart is shown to be more able and discerning.
It is best to ignore conventional society’s portrayal of the male but develop and maintain our own counterculture more in line with traditional values which have served society since time immemorial.
Frederick Dixon
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Couldn’t agree more
janet mills
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Thank you for sharing, Max. I have always loved men and boys all my life. The way they feel, the way they look, the way they smell, and they are fun company too, whether gay or straight. Men are pretty straightforward and pretty easy to keep happy. Women, it seems to me, are like that Grimm Brothers story of the fisherman and his wife–she was NEVER satisfied with anything–and that seems to be how women are today. Like hens in a henhouse that discover a little blood spot on another chicken–peck, peck, peck it to death. Has anyone ever seen a look on Rosie O’Donnell’s face that was not twisted and hateful? or how about the usual look on Michelle Obummer’s face–generally hateful looking and always pretending not to have been brought up in a privileged home. Complain, complain, complain. So tiresome. Yeah, it is time for the pendulum to swing back to a more traditional way of being. One strange thing about today’s mothers worth mentioning: nowadays generally mothers are more interested in looking like sluts and trying to dress like teenagers, dressing provocatively even after they have children, and i think that is a very BAD influence. I can guarantee that Max’s mom did not go around with her boobs popping out of her shirt. i guess it is a result of extremely low self-esteem that these women are on board for “stripper boobs” and unfortunately even LITTLE children are overly aware of hot moms and sexiness. too bad. but women are causing it themselves, i believe.
freeychromosome
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Some grounds for optimism may exist. Those familiar with the phrase ‘Generation Z’ may be aware that they are having no truck with the unremitting PC bullshit they have had forced upon them from nursery through to sixth form.
I have one such in the household and they often communicate via headset when playing on the net. You’d likely be heartened to observe the savage criticism they deploy for any signs PC rhetoric on any subject.
They’ve been on the net since birth and not subject to he cloying MSM programming to the same extent as previous generations.
There were clear signs of resentment amongst the boys at the misandry demonstrated by their female teachers towards them in primary school.
In nursery school they were told off for playing ‘war’ and ‘soldiers’, holding a twig as though it were a gun etc.
Many have seen their fathers and grandfathers turned over by the family courts and can see their life chances diminishing with the shortage of housing stock and competition from other populations.
They’re not having it.
Max Musson
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That is welcome news. Thank you.
Alec Suchi
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Gender fluidity is a new form of lunacy as it fails to recognise the constraints of nature and declares sexuality is not binary and we are not limited to the gender we are born with. It is clear that the progressive left are determined to destroy all aspects of traditional patriarchal society through its promotion of mass immigration, multiculturalism, egalitarianism, feminism, homosexuality and transgenderism.
But gender fluidity appears to have reached a more intense form of degeneracy and is the culmination of the view that irrespective of the limits determined by genetics we can all be what we wish and let nothing prevent the realisation of our dreams, however untenable, unrealistic and absurd.
Children need to be raised in stable and traditional families comprising of a male and female parent, and allowed to express themselves according to their natural inclinations according to values which have served society for thousand of years.
It is only a matter of time before the current degeneracy implodes and collapses.
Max Musson
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Very well said Alec. I couldn’t have put it better myself. 🙂
Wolf of the Sun
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And a hastening of that implosion and collapse can be facilitated by articulating a politics which applies the laws of nature and biology.