day no. 16,397: masculinity is not toxic in excess, but in scarcity

“It is painful, being a man, to have to assert the privilege, or the burden, which Christianity lays upon my own sex. I am crushingly aware how inadequate most of us are, in our actual and historical individualities, to fill the place prepared for us. But it is an old saying in the army that you salute the uniform not the wearer. Only one wearing the masculine uniform can (provisionally, and till the Parousia) represent the Lord to the Church: for we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to Him. We men may often make very bad priests. That is because we are insufficiently masculine. It is no cure to call in those who are not masculine at all. A given man may make a very bad husband; you cannot mend matters by trying to reverse the roles. He may make a bad male partner in a dance. The cure for that is that men should more diligently attend dancing classes; not that the ballroom should henceforward ignore distinctions of sex and treat all dancers as neuter. That would, of course, be eminently sensible, civilized, and enlightened, but, once more, ‘not near so much like a Ball.’” — C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock

The problem with men is not that they are too manly, but that they are such sore representatives of the Man, Christ Jesus. Toxic masculinity, if such a thing exists, is not a excess of manliness, but a deficiency of it. It is a disease that presents where masculinity numbers are too low not too high. That is to say, western civilization does not need to go on a testosterone diet, but to begin taking testosterone supplements. The regiment needs a regimen of masculinity prescribed, not extra training in sensitivity and diversity. The problem with the patriarchy was not that it elevated fathers, but that the fathers were not adequately father-like. The mess of masculinity is how effeminate it is, not how macho it is -- how etiolated it is, not how saturated it is.

Men do not need lessons in femininity, they need to take masculinity more seriously. Men should study their wives, rest assured, but as a man researching a foreign people from a foreign land with whom he has taken interest, not as a convert come to blend in. That, as Lewis says, would merely ruin the dance. You can't have a Ball if some tuck their nuts so that everyone can show up in a dress and neither can you have one if some wrap their chests so that everyone, as Feminism insists, shows up wearing tuxes.