Reclaiming Masculinity

Civilization emasculates.  And Western culture renders masculinity obsolete.  The masculine is far too self-contained, far too independent to serve the needs of a society based on mass consumption.     

The drive to impose your will upon an unyielding world, to embrace fear and push through pain, to forge your being in the struggle to wrench free from that which would have you contained, that is our male heritage and the evolutionary legacy of everyone who carries a Y chromosome.  But that drive to assert your masculine birthright has been stolen, co-opted, redesigned and refashioned to fit the plush feminine prison of a corporate boardroom, or, more often the case, simply siphoned off through the slow castration of a forty-hour workweek.  Even our meat, the food of choice for man the hunter, is infused with female hormones, as if to keep us like the cattle, docile.

We are offered hollow substitutes in the form of weekend sports and a six pack, passive forms of entertainment.  We have become fat, feminized voyeurs with plasma screen televisions and surround sound.  We project ourselves into Hollywood’s characterizations of men, and envy the professional athletes with their dazzling physical demonstrations.  But despite the camera angles and the steroid regimens, the actors and the athletes aren’t true men any more than we are. 

We try to hide our shame from our wives and children—and most importantly, from ourselves.  We hide it behind a stock portfolio, or a new car.  We hide it behind alcohol and cigarettes.  We hide it behind pornography and sexual conquests.  We hide it behind a well manicured lawn and a bass boat in the driveway and a round of golf.  But deep down, in the core of our being, we know we are not being true to our design.  And the shame creeps ever upward and outward until it threatens to become our very skin if we allow it. 

We cannot allow it.  We cannot lose our legacy.  The future of the world depends on it. We need to embrace our fear, push through the pain, wrench ourselves free from society’s emasculating chains, and reclaim our birthright as men.