The Rise Of Strong Women, Fall Of Soft Men, And Return Of Gentlemen

In soft regions are born soft men.

Herodotus

A few days ago, a video popped up within my media feed, an editorial closing, posing a question that keeps popping up, especially from the lips of women; “Have men become too soft?”

The presenter mentioned several causes for the rise of these “soft” men. Was it the wussification of men, as so many want to allege? Maybe everything would be solved if we could just get men to toughen up. Was it the demonization of masculinity so badly that being a man is now shameful? Maybe everything would be solved if men would start being proud of being manly. I don’t think either attitude will solve the issue.

At the end, she did mention what could be the key cause and actual solution to the problem. “Teach your sons to be men, because the women of the world are tired of the boys.” The problem was that for the longest time, society was in such a hurry to make men out of boys, that we never taught boys how to be men.

Consider that for the last couple of decades, men were told that their value as men rested on being better than other men. It rested on having financial stability through a good job; proven to the world through an expensive car and a nice house. It rested on how many women they can sleep. It rested in being able to get a beautiful wife when they finally decided to settled down. Then, it’s rested on having a family they can show off. Just consider at how we portray politicians and successful men. They stand proudly as their wife and kids become decoration around them, as proof of their stability. In the backdrop, we see either their homes or cars as prove of their wealth. The entirety of this kind of manhood rested on such a fragile foundation made up of external factors that even the most simplest of things caused their world to tumble down. This lead too many men into feel a sense of obsoleteness as soon as life threw them a curve ball.

If someone faster or stronger than him shows up, he’s no longer a man. If he became unemployed and loses his financial stability, he he’s no longer a man. If he gets shot down by a woman, he’s no longer a man. If his kids didn’t measure up to his expectations, he’s no longer a man. When you think about it, under this mentality, those things that “make him a man,” are also the biggest threat to his ideal of manhood. Unemployment, failure, divorce, “disappointing kids,” or simply being told “no” by a woman become a direct assault on their masculinity.

As a response to this attitude, we demonized manhood, or at least what was sold to us as manhood for the last few decades. Society went off chanting the damage these expectations placed on men, as we blamed everything on toxic masculinity. We did our best to swing the pendulum of manhood as far away as possible from the old traditions.  And as the pendulum started to sway away from this previous mindset, we began to praise any man who did things previously considered manly, followed up by shaming any man who expressed interest in any form of traditional masculinity. It was as if to avoid being a slave to masculinity, we now became slaves to “anti-masculinity.” Social media became flooded with men screaming “look at how sensitive I am” as if it proved to the world how they broke free from the bonds of manhood. At the same time, chivalry, and any other idea traditionally tied to masculinity, was shamed as sexist, at best, or toxic, at worse.

And then, slowly but surely, it happened.

We realized that we almost killed off what made men valuable within society and what made men of value. If before we taught men to be ethically infant brutes, now we created ethically infant milksops. We told men that the old traditions of honor and chivalry were harmful, and then wonder why men today feel like they have no purpose. We ridiculed the importance of honor, and wonder why we have men without loyalty. We demonized strength and wonder why men today have no valor. We, pretty much, castrated men as we told them how masculinity was bad, and then wonder where all the “real men” are.

In our haste to make men out of boys, we failed them twice. The first time, we failed them by creating brutes without humility, as we forgot to teach them character every time we taught them the value of strength. Then, in our attempt to fix it, we created sensitive men who were little more than useless as soon they faced a challenge. We forgot to teach them the value of determination and valor when we taught them about compassion. As some men grew disenchanted with society constantly telling them what it means to be a man, we’re now having to deal with a third group; men who are brutes in times of peace yet cowards in times of conflict, the worst of both worlds.

But fortunately, all is not lost.

Just as there has been a rise in true Strong Independent Women, men have been developing our own counterpart. We are witnessing a rise in men who’ve taken it upon themselves to bring back the old lessons personal character, to teach themselves how to be better men. These men realized that the problem wasn’t masculinity but rather everything that was edited out of masculinity. The solution didn’t lie in dismissing the lessons learned from the past, but rather taking the best lessons from the past while embracing the world of the present. Instead of ending up with the worst of both worlds, we began to strive for the best of both worlds.

In this process, men have begun to realize what manhood truly meant. It’s not about proving you’re better than other men, but about striving to be better than the man you were before. It’s about being able to stand before a challenge and push yourself. It’s not about making money, but about making a difference. It’s not about having a job, but about having the work ethic to get things done. It’s not about owning a house or having a wife and family. It’s about making a home, being a good husband and an involved dad.

Men have realized that it’s you should never become either a brute or a meek man exclusively. Instead, we are now seeing men who used to be brutes, yet strive to find their compassion and humility. We see men who used to be meek developing their determination and being empowered by the strength that comes from valor. It’s about growing stronger AND softer, and yet never compromising either. These men have taught themselves these lessons, and more importantly, are teaching these lessons to the next generation of men. And for the first time in a long time, we are seeing a rebirth of mentorship, as society is finally waking up to the importance of men becoming proper role models for boys, as they teach through example.

For now, we are few, but every day we are more. We are the modern Lancelots and Galahads, the new errant knights, who realized that we could be more than what society sold to us as manhood. We are the new philosophers, poets, and the warriors, as we try to bring back honor by reforging masculinity. We are the new Gentlemen of the Modern World.

And to the ladies having a hard time finding us, the worthwhile men … If it’s any consolation, men are having just a hard time trying to find the worthwhile ladies as well. Quality isn’t that common.

Guerilla Compliments

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

Mark Twain

I’m going to say something that, although isn’t true, most of us have thought about. The world is full of idiots and assholes. The reality is that it isn’t. It’s just that assholes are pretty vocal about proving to the world what they are, usually loud enough to drown out the rest of us. And the problem lies in the fact that it just takes one single awful word or act to ruin our entire day. We’ll let it simmer within our minds, poisoning our every thought, and spreading it out to our environments as if it were some kind of virulent disease.

But here’s the flip side of the coin many of us usually don’t consider. It also takes a single compliment, a single kind word, to make someone’s day. When someone, specially a complete stranger, says something nice, you will probably end up smiling on the fact that someone was able to say something nice to you in a world proud of just being mean. You’ll share the story to your friends, reliving that simple moment where for an instant, the world wasn’t that horrible.

Now here’s the truly amazing fact that we keep forgetting, you have that power over everyone around you, especially those you don’t know in a personal level. You can be an asshole and ruin someone’s entire day or you can be nice and make someone’s entire day. You can make a difference every day to make this a nicer world, a single smile at a time.

With that in mind, I have always believed in guerrilla acts, as they become so random that the person is left without the possibility of accusing you of having ulterior motives. I mentioned this before in an old Valentine post. But what if it’s not limited to romance and valentines, what if you expanded it to everything and everyone?

What I am proposing are simple acts that take very little effort. It’s as simple as smiling to a complete stranger and saying “good day.” It’s as simple as offering a compliment on something about the person. “That’s a beautiful scarf” or “what a lovely pendant” will usually let the person realize that the world recognizes their existence in a positive way.

Just make sure to leave it at that and not turn it into some kind of opening gambit or pick up line, as it take away ALL validity of the act. Also consider what you compliment on. ’Dat Ass or Damn aren’t really appropriate compliments. Neither is complimenting on things that might be interpreted as inappropriate.

A while back, there was an online joke about #DudesGreatingDudes, as a criticism of catcalling apologists. Although it was intended as a joke, I actually agree with it. Limiting your compliments to the ladies proves that you’re intentions aren’t about making a decent world, but rather to see how many numbers you rack up. See a gentleman wearing a nice tie? Let him know. They have a nice car, why not mention it? Is it really that hard to say something as simple as “nice hat”?

You see, anyone gets a kick off a compliment and anyone deserves to be reminded that decent people actually outnumber the assholes. We just have to start being as loud as those who ruin everyone else’s day.

Not Trying To Pick You Up

Being polite is so rare these days that it’s often confused with flirting.

Unknown

There’s a general sentiment about today’s society when it comes to the topic of manners. We constantly lament the loss of simple words such as please and thank you, as we mourn politeness and consideration for others. And in the Internet’s usual way of making a quick judgement, we blame the previous generation of parents for not teaching these habits to our current generation of adults.

I cannot agree with that logic, nor do I feel it’s fair to simply use parents as the scapegoats for ill-mannered people. What if the problem isn’t a lack of politeness at all? What if the problem is that we have taught people to refuse politeness and manners, to look at them from a negative perspective?

Just consider the quote I mentioned at the beginning. “Being polite is so rare these days that it’s often confused with flirting.” We have created this mentality that anyone with manners, or even anyone who treats us well, does so because they have ulterior motives. Take a second to consider the following examples.

A young man complements a lady on her dress. What’s her reaction? To thank him? Unless she’s interested in the young man, rarely. She will probably mention that she has a boyfriend, even if the conversation had nothing to do with her relationship status. An entire sector within our society, composed of men and women with a desperate need to feel offended, will say that something as simple as a man opening a door is in reality some act of oppression against the woman or against the man, all depending who wrote of the cry-blog.

And it’s not just about the interaction between men and women. A man complements another man and the man in the receiving end will wonder if he is being hit on or if he is being set up for some kind of swindle. A woman complements another woman, and the woman in the receiving end will wonder if it’s some kind of thinly veiled insult.

It’s not that we have forgotten how to be polite to each other, but that we’ve forgotten how to react to politeness. We are constantly told that complements and politeness comes at a price. Worse of all, in some cases, it does; validating this social paranoia we are forced to live in. We live in a society that spotlights anyone with proper behavior, hoping they fail at one point, simply to justify a conclusion we were indoctrinated into long ago.

Politeness and manners aren’t gone. We have just chosen to overlook them as we focus on every single negative action that happens in our lives. We don’t remember the person who said thank you, but rather focus on the ungrateful one who didn’t. You want to see manners become important within our society again? Make them important within your life first.

Chivalrous Women And The Return Of Damehood

Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.

Nora Ephron

We often focus our conversation on terms like Gentlemen and Chivalry and how they pertain to men and their development/empowerment. We also express the importance of recognizing and promoting gender equality and how this can be done without the need of using gender neutrality. This means that the following two questions keep popping up in my social media feeds:

1.What do you call the female version of “Gentleman?”

2.What’s the woman’s version of Chivalry?

The funny thing is that every single article and post starting off with either of these question aren’t really asking a question but making an opening statement to a preconceived argument based on misinformation and misdirection to benefit their exposition. Why do I say “misinformation and misdirection?” Because both of these questions have actually appropriate answers.

Let’s start with the first one as it’s pretty damn obvious. You probably have heard it countless times within your life and might have even guess it by now. The woman’s version of “Gentleman” is called “Lady,” like the phrase “Ladies and Gentlemen.” If you find “Lady” as a negative term based on your personal interpretation and experience with the word or you want to sound more pedantic, you can also use Gentlewoman.

On the second question, I want to expand and enjoy.

Is there a code, similar to the medieval knightly code of chivalry, for women?  Can we find a female counterpart to the code that later shaped the gentlemen of today? Is there such a thing? According to most online sites, if such a thing doesn’t exist, everything that gentlemen stand for can be absolutely dismissed as sexist, either against men expected to do it or women expected to put up with it.

Believe it or not, there is. There exists a medieval Knightly code for women and it’s called…

…

Wait for it…

…

CHIVALRY!

Yes, you heard me right, chivalry. Let’s start by clarifying a highly overlooked fact, women could be knights. Sure, there were plenty of “men-only” knightly orders, but there was also several inclusive orders and “women-only” orders. When a dead knight’s land passed to his wife or daughter, these duties were imposed on that woman. In England, the title of Lady or Dame was usually given to such a woman holding such honors and “Damehood” was an acceptable term to define a woman’s “Knighthood.”  In Spain she would take the term Doña and in France female knights were called Chevalière.

And this wasn’t something exclusive to European Chivalry and Knighthood, as throughout history, strong fighting women have been present. I actually did a post about the history of warrior women some time ago.

Which brings us to today. Is there room today for a modern version of Damehood? I find this question somewhat condosending considering the Warrior Women who already shine brilliantly within our society! You see it in every strong and graceful woman who, even things have gone wrong in their lives, handled it. They refused to let their past or their environment define who they are now. 

These Ladies refused to embrace the victimhood mentality so popular among men and women today; a mentality that has turn any expectation of accountability, self-empowerment, and self-assessment into synonyms of victim-blaming. These men and women assume the idea of nothing being their fault or constantly searching for villians to blame. If it's never their fault, they don’t need to take responsibility for it. If they can't take responsibility for it, they will always be a victim in need of sympathy and attention, instead of actual help to overcome their challenges.

 
These Modern Dames are the strong independent women who refuse to be a victim of anything. We see these women showing more “balls” than most men and refusing to be, as Ronda Rousey so beautifully put it, a “Do Nothing Bitch,” a woman who tries to be pretty and be taken care of by somebody else. They hold their fate in their own hands. They refuse to be a Damsel in Distress or play off the victim card as a way to receive “equality” without the accountability of true equality.

We see this in the Queens who stand toe to toe with any King, as they should never be treated as any less. We see this in the warrior-women who fight side by side with the warrior-men as protectors while following the same code of honor with the same obligations. We see them in Ladies setting themselves apart of other women by carrying themselves with the same grace and determination that sets Gentleman apart form other men. We see them in every Dame who has inspired girls to be more than what society expects form women and teach boys how to be men.

Learning To Do Good Things From Bad People.

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

Khalil Gibran

There is a social side effect of surrounding yourself with the right people; you end up surrounded with the right kind of people. This isn’t always a good thing. I know that comment makes little sense when taken alone, but I promise I’ll explain in a second.

When we start looking to change, to evolve, like-minded people will gravitate towards you. After a while, you will notice how much your world has changed for the better. And often it changes so much that you might forget why this change was necessary, why you started down this path. You might even start taking for granted all you have grown and how much society has grown, as you become comfortable with where you are.

Then you see some idiot shows you just how messed up the world still is.

It might be something that popped up in the news, some post in your social media, or even some comment made by a random person. At this point you will wonder where the hell this person came from since, within YOUR world, this kind of mentality is so uncommon. That’s the problem… within your world.

As you surround yourself with the right people, you tend to forget that the wrong people are still out there. All too often we assume that our work is mostly done simply because we no longer have a front row seat to the disasters that humans so often are. These people and these events come into our lives to keep us from forgetting the good fight. I am not saying that we should be grateful for these kinds of events, but that we should never forget that they still happen, even if they become fewer within our lives.

So, no matter how well you are doing, still go out into the world to do good. There is plenty of good that still needs to be done. Don’t make your world so small that only those who think like you live there, but keep it large enough to still see those you don’t want to see. And never forget why you started down the path.