Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Why Can't a Man Be More Like a Woman?

Back in the day, when women were entering the psycho professions in ever larger numbers, female therapists claimed that they, by virtue of their anatomy, had a far better understanding of what it meant to be a woman. They could feel female pain because they had felt female pain. It was difficult to dispute the point.

Effectively, it was a successful marketing ploy. Perhaps too successful. By now the psycho profession is becoming a woman’s profession. The vast majority of college psychology majors are female. In the future, psychology will more closely resemble nursing than doctoring.

And yet, this must also mean that female therapists have no real understanding of what it is like being a man. So they want men to be more like women. They believe that therapy must teach men to express their feelings, they are fostering character traits that will cause a man to be disrespected by other men. Today’s therapy, conducted most often by women, but also by many men, attempts to girlify or womanize men. Not surprisingly, men who are perceived to be weak will try to overcome the profession by becoming more aggressive and violent. Be careful what you wish for....

Of course, the alternative is to medicate men. Because if you cannot treat them with psychology, there are always pills.

It’s not just about the male/female binary. It’s about the fact that what passes for research in the psycho fields today has been hopelessly contaminated by ideology. In particular, by feminist ideology. This ideology defames and demeans boys, considers them to be toxic and criminal, and sees manliness as something to be healed.

We would be remiss if we did not point out, yet again, that the American president who excelled at empathy, who felt your pain, was also the American president who sexually assaulted and abused and harassed women. The dimwits of the American Psychological Association will never make the connection, but they are promoting a type of male behavior that is decidedly abusive toward women. The word “machismo” does not come from an Anglo-Saxon culture. It has nothing to do with the codes of gentlemanly behavior. In truth, psycho professionals today seem not to have heard of or to understand such codes. They want men to get in touch with their feelings, the better to become mini Bill Clintons.

Now that the psycho profession has been taken over by women, or better, by feminists, it shows a distinct and marked hostility toward men. It is less blatant than the feminists who shriek their outrage at all men, but surely, it is more obviously promoting antagonism between the sexes than comity.

The psycho profession belongs to the Great American Cultural Revolution. It has set out to change human nature, the better to make it fit into the ideological straitjacket produced by radical feminism. It cares less about treating mental illness or emotional distress than in transforming society. Note the following report from the American Psychological Association. I emphasize, this report was not produced by a bunch of radical feminists. It was produced by the nation’s leading organization of professional psychologists. Hopefully, you will never again be tempted to imagine that this has anything to do with science.

It addresses questions about manliness and masculinity, but it really cares about the fact that its ideological blinders have caused it to alienate half of the population. And to lose a considerable amount of business. If you imagine that a middle aged man who has emotional issues is going to consult with a young woman who wants him to feeling his feelings… you are living in never-never land.

So, we read an opening gambit, one that suggests that the cultural revolution has not been as successful as psycho professionals would like. Strictly speaking, this has nothing to do with mental health:

And men still dominate professionally and politically: As of 2018, 95.2 percent of chief operating officers at Fortune 500 companies were men. According to a 2017 analysis by Fortune, in 16 of the top companies, 80 percent of all high-ranking executives were male. Meanwhile, the 115th Congress, which began in 2017, was 81 percent male.

The important point is that therapy did not just arrive on the scene yesterday. The therapeutic culture, as Philip Rieff dubbed it, has been around for five decades now. If men and women are at daggers drawn, then perhaps the psycho world should begin by taking some responsibility for its appalling stupidity… especially in treating men.

Anyway, the APA is happy to assert that men are a criminal class. We note, as a curiosity, that beyond failing to take any responsibility for this situation, the APA, a pseudo-scientific outfit, makes no mention of hormones like testosterone:


Nor does the APA mention  that the culture and especially the school system now functions like a matriarchy. It is decidedly hostile toward boys and tends to beat them down in favor of girls. That this should have led boys to be more hostile toward girls should be the least surprising outcome.

For the record, the APA concludes by blaming it on the patriarchy:

Thirteen years in the making, they [the new APA guidelines] draw on more than 40 years of research showing that traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage that echoes both inwardly and outwardly.

It’s been decades since anyone has dared defend traditional masculinity, so we again see an instance where ideology trumps reality. Another one is contained in the following piece of nonsense:

Prior to the second-wave feminist movement in the 1960s, all psychology was the psychology of men. Most major studies were done only on white men and boys, who stood in as proxies for humans as a whole. Researchers assumed that masculinity and femininity were opposite ends of a spectrum, and “healthy” psychology entailed identifying strongly with the gender roles conferred by a person’s biological sex.

How ignorant is this? Consider the facts. The work of psychotherapy began over a century ago when Sigmund Freud set out to cure hysteria. All of the hysterics were female. He traveled to Paris where Jean-Martin Charcot had a ward filled with hysterical females. In truth, the European wave of hysteria provoked serious and considerable interest in female psychology, by psychologists and especially neurologists. To say that second-wave feminism provoked an interest in treating women is beyond ignorant. It is ideologically driven ignorance.

Then, the psychologists bring forth the real problem. Whatever the psycho profession is selling, men are not buying it. They are not good patients. They are not lining up to be told that they should be more vulnerable. They are not seeking mental health services. Considering that the psycho profession holds them in contempt, why is anyone surprised. They made their bed. Now they should lie in it.

The APA explains:

This masculine reluctance toward self-care extends to psychological help. Research led by Omar Yousaf, PhD, found that men who bought into traditional notions of masculinity were more negative about seeking mental health services than those with more flexible gender attitudes (Psychology of Men & Masculinity, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2015).

And also:

… men are often reluctant to admit vulnerability, 

Just what a man needs, if he navigates the world of men… an enhanced sense of his own vulnerability. Better yet, therapy prescribes more openness about feelings… as was evidenced by Bill Clinton:

Because of the way many men have been brought up—to be self-sufficient and able to take care of themselves—any sense that things aren’t OK needs to be kept secret,” Rabinowitz says. “Part of what happens is men who keep things to themselves look outward and see that no one else is sharing any of the conflicts that they feel inside. That makes them feel isolated. They think they’re alone. They think they’re weak. They think they’re not OK. They don’t realize that other men are also harboring private thoughts and private emotions and private conflicts.”

Make men weak and vulnerable. The psycho world does not understand that this systematic derogation of manly behavior is likely to provoke a counter reaction. Most men do not just take it lying down. They fight back.

The therapists do understand that some of these traditional masculine traits are not so bad, but they care more about defeat than about victory, about suffering pain and about self-sacrifice:

It’s also important to encourage pro-social aspects of masculinity, says McDermott. In certain circumstances, traits like stoicism and self-sacrifice can be absolutely crucial, he says. But the same tough demeanor that might save a soldier’s life in a war zone can destroy it at home with a romantic partner or child.

Therapists do not undestand traditional masculinity, so they caricature it. They reduce it to violence and sexism. Again, ideology drives the conversation. 

Now, however, psycho professionals are working on positive masculinity… because it should be used to accompany the weakness and vulnerability that has become the professions stock-in-trade:

The clinician’s role, McDermott says, can be to encourage men to discard the harmful ideologies of traditional masculinity (violence, sexism) and find flexibility in the potentially positive aspects (courage, leadership). He and his team are working on a positive-masculinities scale to capture peoples’ adherence to the pro-social traits expected from men, something that has yet to be measured systematically.

So, they want to overcome norms and do not understand that the culture has been degrading masculine norms for decades now. And they do not understand that the wave of bad male behavior, documented by the #MeToo movement is the direct consequence of this absurd effort to reject norms of courtship, dating and gestures of respect for women.

The goal is not to help men. The goal, as the study makes clear, is to transform the culture and to change the world. Tell me why insurance companies are paying for this indoctrination and brainwashing:

Getting that message out to men—that they’re adaptable, emotional and capable of engaging fully outside of rigid norms—is what the new guidelines are designed to do. And if psychologists can focus on supporting men in breaking free of masculinity rules that don’t help them, the effects could spread beyond just mental health for men, McDermott says. “If we can change men,” he says, “we can change the world.”


Anonymous said...

How about an effort to change reprehensible female behaviour?

Derek Ramsey said...


The NYT recently published "Where Boys Outperform Girls in Math: Rich, White, and Suburban Districts". Girls universally outperform boys in language arts and selectively outperform boys in math (especially in poorer demographics). Therefore, the education gap means it is problematic if boys outperform girls at anything. Logic.

My kid's public elementary school has "student of the month". The percentage of boys that win student of the month is between 13% and 52% each iteration. Girls dominate those who are treated special. One of my two girls 'wins' these kinds of accolades so disproportionately often that even the other kids have noticed the preferential treatment. It's a joke.

trigger warning said...

Hold my beer and watch me punch that sissy, McDermott, in the kisser.

sestamibi said...

Just wondering who the "McDermott" referenced was. Could it be former US Rep. Jim McDermott from Seattle, who is a psychiatrist and was one of the most radical members of the House in his time (and replaced by a woman even more radical)?

Anonymous said...

Why are there no significant matriarchal societies (there are matrilinear, where wealth and family line is assigned to the mother). If all things were equal, then there needs to be some reason why most societies are to some degree (some benign, some not) patriarchal (not to mention most social mammals).

Male aggression has an evil sound to it, but it's the same 'aggression' that has fueled most exploration, driven firefighters to risk their lives, drives business managers to compete throughout their lives. One fellow I spoke to sponsers competitive overland bicycle races, and he observed that the most aggressive competitors tend to be the investment banking executives out of NY. One example he gave was a guy who broke his hand but still finished the race before getting it treated.

Evolution explains this. Both males and females are optimized for the best distribution of their genes.. and behaviors that work for males do not work well for females and vice versa.

As someone pointed out, if you want to see a matriarchal society in our world, simply look at the inner cities where the men are largely absent. {I have heard this same situation has been shown in elephant herds, where the old males were killed by poachers. The young ones went wild]

Sam L. said...

Why can't a man be more like a woman? Because he's smarter than that.

Anonymous said...

"The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression — is, on the whole, harmful," according to the APA.

It also alleged that "the more men conformed to masculine norms, the more likely they were to consider as normal risky health behaviors such as heavy drinking, using tobacco and avoiding vegetables, and to engage in these risky behaviors themselves."

Avoiding vegetables as a masculine norm. Real men don't eat their veggies. The late George H. W. Bush comes to mind, he refused to eat broccoli. It is too late for Bush, may he rest in peace, but the market for broccoli-therapy must be immense.

Anonymous said...

Did they write a similar treatise on female characteristics and "toxicity"? I doubt it...

You are so correct. That part about the characteristics that push men ahead at much truth. You must be competitive, have drive and an unwillingness to give up. Men must NOT give these things up. As the organization itself says, these qualities can save lives on the battlefield (which also means they can save our country and culture). But they would have men diminish or even give up those values and qualities? Why?

Of course men are angry. And this feminist control game is not helping other women. Being online a lot, I see the c---- word everywhere now. So those of us on the men's side, who stand up for them and against the hazy, "I might have been pushed onto a bed 36 years ago" Ford types have to put up with what the feminists have stirred up.

Men are so angry that they're deliberately (tho' perhaps unknowingly, if that's possible) using sexual metaphors for everything that has to do with anger....PDT is "s----g" Putin's "d---" and things like that. I hate it. But who can blame them? Using words that describe what women do in bed is becoming the most popular form of expressing rage now. Too bad that those of us who are NOT the enemy and who are NOT trying to change/control men get the full force of it, too, instead of just the ones who assume "toxic masculinity." But who can blame them?

Doug Cranmer said...

I have seen situations with a woman in the cat's bird seat, in health care, provoking a male client or patient in the way women do instinctually. Just because she can.

Absolutely the only thing that prevented him from killing her was a prison sentence. And it was a coin flip, a moment's loss of self control that made the difference between her living or dying that day.

They are genuinely stupid.

Ares Olympus said...

I thought the Red Green Show did well with their men's lodge prayer "I'm a man, and I can change, if I have to, I guess" and you presume the issues of change are probably domestic, like putting the toilet seat down, something a man can at least understand, even if it doesn't seem that important personally.

Wasn't it from My Fair Lady where professor Higgins asked why a woman can't be more like a man? Yes, right here.

It certainly would be a lot easier if all men were from Mars, and women from Venus, and everyone knew those worlds can not long meet on earth.

autothreads said...

Could My Fair Lady or Pygmalion be produced today?

Anonymous said...


I've held for sometime, the idea that butch lesbians both hate men, and seem to want to be men, all the while having no concept of "gentlemanly behaviour".

Sam L. said...

I got married late, and my wife complained that I didn't put the seat down. Our solution: seat AND lid both down. Nobody falls in during the night.