Men Should be Seen and Not Heard

A comment was left by Anonymous Reader over at Dalrock's place that deserves more attention regarding common frustrations with traditionalists (read full comment string for context):

"Elizabeth, I understand that you do not want anyone to criticize you or your friends in any way. But that is not how the world works. Sure, trad con web sites can ban disagreement – either by refusing to post criticism & banning critics as one has for a while, or by censoring Blogger comments via deletion as another recently engaged in – but that won’t make the reasoned, thoughtful, sometimes angry critics go away. You don’t convert a man by silencing him, although history is full of churches and states that tried it. And you don’t win people over to your side by bashing them with your god one day and calling them “evil” the next."

That is just the thing--men are becoming increasingly frustrated and even angry as they wake up to our brave new feminized world. Whether their comments are banned, deleted, or scolded to "be agreeable", at the end of the day, the feelings of these men still remain. The simplest or perhaps it is billed as the "Christ-like" solution is to ignore these men as if their thoughts and feelings don't exist. Put the fingers in the ears and sing "la la la la" and continue on with the elephant in the room. Women want men to share their feelings, but as with many other things, what they really mean is "please just share the feelings that make my feelings feel good."  It used to be children, but now it is men that should be "seen and not heard".  Many aren't necessarily looking for agreement or to be friends, but simply just to be heard and you don't have to agree or become friends with someone to truly listen.

"What would be a good idea would be to acknowledge the ugly reality of marriage law in the US, for a start. Not in a flippant, “oh, well, yes, there’s a problem” manner that has more than a whiff of the college girl in lit-crit class, but in a serious, adult, sober manner. I don’t see trad cons doing that first step.

Traditionalist/conservative people have to come face to face with facts; to continue to live in a fantasy world where every social problem can be solved by men “just manning up” is simply a non-starter. I’ve grown weary of pointing out the same inconvenient facts over and over again to people who seem unable to learn. It is not enough to flippantly acknowledge “some issues” with marriage at one moment, and then turn ’round and once again demand that men should just “man up” and marry in the next. There is a huge blind spot among tradcons regarding the reality of Marriage 2.0, to be blunt. And it’s not getting better. For people who claim to have long memories, trad-cons in my experience don’t seem to be able to use them very well; I should not have to point out the one-sided nature of modern marriage 2.0 contract enforcement over and over and over again, should i? Yet that has to happen every time I attempt to engage any trad con on the topic, even those that I’ve discussed the issue with before. If a group of people can’t get beyond the initial problem statement, if they can’t overcome their own denial that a problem exists, I do not want them as allies, because they are useless since they cannot learn from experience. And the trad-con fantasy that somehow, after a societal collapse, everyone will turn to them for advice is not even worth discussing. It’s on a par with something a teenager might dream up after reading too much apocalyptic science fiction. Yet I keep seeing it here and there – I cannot take seriously any group that entertains such nonsense.

Your cite of Christians and marriage is really not useful, given the fact that evangelical Christians get divorced at essential the same rate as the larger society – 38% vs. 40% – so I really do not see why anyone should take any advice from you on that score seriously at all. You show me a church with a divorce rate that is, oh, under 20% and I will pay attention to what they have to say. As it is, churchianity folks are like a drunk on a bar stool pointing at another drunk and hollering “Hey! You’re drunk!”. It’s not impressive to anyone that is sober."

This point about Christians failing at marriage cannot be stressed enough. This is absolutely true and we cannot sell and market marriage to a secular world when the product is defective and has such a high return rate within our own community. Christianity and churches are frankly a mess. They have a huge denial problem, or "blind spot", and tend to think its about quantity not quality. If a lot of people (thousands in the mega-churches) are attending church, then everyone must be OK and spiritually whole. All the while many, if not all, are left struggling and in a spiritual void. Same thing with marriage--the push is that if we can just get more to marry, like getting more to go to church, all will be OK. As if saying a few vows and worshiping a few Sundays, will set the world right. Both marriage and being a Christian takes A LOT of work. It is not the act of a wedding or the act of going to church that determines the quality/strength of a marriage or the heart/faith of a Christian. Simply getting married in our 2.0 world, does not guarantee the strength or dedication to that marriage. The churches have failed in efforts to strengthen and preserve the marriages that already exist. Before secular folks can even begin to take us seriously, we need to get serious about our own beliefs.

 In response to the Christian divorce statistics another commenter had this to say:

"Concerning divorce rates among Christians, yes it’s a shame. Their murder rate is probably high,too. What does it matter? As a Christian I’m supposed to live according to God’s laws, if some other people call themselves Christian and violate them it hardly gives me license to do the same. Since most MRAs are apparently unbelievers they simply can’t grasp it."

What does it matter?! It matters because Christians are to be "the light of the world". If Christians are not setting a good example, what chance does the rest of humanity have? Secular people are not paying attention to individual marriages, but to statistics and to how bright the Christian community light really shines. There is little motivation for others to move towards marriage when our light is nearly half burned out. We should present a sign of hope that marriage can work; but as a whole, we are not doing that and we then expect secular men to jump on the marriage bandwagon, sit down, and most importantly---shut-up.