Interesting column about becoming a man, instead of a scared little boy

[Jay74]

What would John Wayne do?

By Vox Day

4-18-05

After almost every column or blogpost I’ve written about the various idiosyncrasies of women, some woman writes to complain that I never criticize men. Of course, there’s not exactly a shortage of male-bashing in the mainstream media today, to say nothing of chick rags like Cosmopolitan, Ms., Self and other variants on the Me, Myself and I theme so popular with women.

And while there is something about the modern American man that is absolutely worthy of criticism, I don’t think it’s exactly what these feminists had in mind. For you see, the main problem with men today is that they are not men, but frightened little boys - afraid of their bosses, their wives, their girlfriends and their government. They are afraid of their employees, their children and their children’s teachers.

They are not men because the hallmark of a real man is one who is not ruled by fear. Consider the real men of history, the immortals whose names we still honor today. Leonidas and his Three Hundred did not run before the Persian army at Thermopylae even though they knew they would fall before the host of Xerxes. Winston Churchill, a military and political failure, did not quail before the might of Nazi Germany, but inspired the nation of Britain to stand with him. And not even years in the Soviet gulags could silence the brave voice of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose iron will enabled him to outlast the very government that imprisoned him.

Can you imagine one of these men meekly submitting to the harsh words of a boss? Can you imagine Cicero cowering before the sharp tongue of a nagging wife, who did not cower before an emperor? Or the Apostle Paul remaining silent for fear someone might take offense to his words?

What men lack today is a defining point separating boyhood from manhood. The mere accumulation of years is not enough, for as the saying goes, a woman is, but a man must become. It is interesting to see the difference between one’s friends who enter the Marine Corps and those who enter college - four years later, there is seldom a question that the Marine is indeed a man, but far more often than not, the college graduate is simply a post-adolescent version of what he was before.

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[Jay74]

…CONTINUED

For the knowledge of manhood is the assurance that one has faced the test and passed. This is not a test of what one knows, but the test of character that only comes from facing your fears. As society has become safer, and in many ways better thanks to technology, it has also eliminated many of the tests that boys of previous generations were forced to face in becoming men.

In my boyhood, I envied my uncle and my grandfather. They were men. The much-decorated Marine veterans of five wars between them, they both survived everything the Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and Iraqis could throw at them and no longer feared anything but God. When at 71, my grandfather broke his hand on the jaw of a carjacker who foolishly thought a .38 revolver and a six-inch height advantage should suffice to cow an old man, I asked him if he hadn’t been afraid.

He shrugged and said that he figured if Guadacanal and Tarawa didn’t kill him, no young buck with a popgun stood a chance.

But too many young men today lack such role models. And yet, they seek to find their manhood as if by instinct, all too often making do with inadequate substitutes such as fraternities and gangs. At the time, I did not know I was looking to test myself when my best friend and I joined our martial-arts dojo after being informed by the Marine recruiter that the Gulf War would be over before we finished basic training and our assistance, while appreciated, was surplus to requirements. In retrospect, however, that’s precisely what we were doing.

It isn’t until he faces the test that a boy begins to understand that it isn’t the absence of fear that’s the issue, it’s how you accept that fear and face it. It is the boy who gets knocked down … it is the man who rises again in the full knowledge of what’s coming next.

Women are not to blame for the demasculization of the American man. It is men who have allowed this to happen, it is the fathers who shirk their responsibility to their sons and the young men who choose the soft and easy way of leisure over the less comfortable path of discipline who are to blame.

So, young man, if you harbor any doubts in your head about your manhood, let me assure you they are correct. The question is, what are you going to do about it?

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