media

feminism, leadership, masculinity, media, roles

Crisis of Masculinity: "hapless fellas trying to figure out how to project authority in homes and relationships thoroughly dominated by their female partners"

Posted on August 17, 2013May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

The first generation of men who are the victims of feminism have now lived fully as men. That group are in their 70’s, and their sons, the second generation, are now fathers of the third generation of men who have lived in a culture (in the West) where men are not supposed to be men. They don’t know how to be men anymore. NY Magazine calls this state of things a “crisis of masculinity.” I call it the natural result of generations of feminism.

Initially called the “Women’s Liberation Movement” the cultural emasculation of men began in the 1960s along with the other movements of the day, civil rights and sexual revolution, and continued through the mid-1980s. This movement was actually the second wave of feminism and as such, it had a different focus. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, first wave feminism “focused mainly on suffrage and overturning legal obstacles to legal gender equality, (i.e., voting rights , property rights ), second-wave feminism broadened the debate to a wide range of issues: sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities.”

The latter part of the twentieth century indeed was a hotbed of change. Longstanding cultural norms were up-ended. As a result, the complementarian aspect of male-female marriages and opposite sex relationships suffered.

So often, the media is the mirror of our culture, being reflected back to us. The current spate of television shows which are going to open this ‘fall season’ are full of leading males who are depicted as emasculated, and they wonder why. They are perplexed as to where it all went. These shows present ‘comedy’ in the men’s efforts to try and find their way back.

Here is one example:

She-Runners – An encouraging wave of chick-created comedies.
“In a perfect aftershock to the success of Bridesmaids (not to mention the ascendancy of Poehler and Fey), there’s a major uptick this fall in sitcoms about young single women, and, even better, several of these shows were created by female writers. It’s an encouraging phenomenon—as well as a weird analogue to the networks’ slate of emasculated-dude comedies (from Work It to Man Up), which look far less … winning.”

The Men of the New Fall Sitcoms Would Hate the Women of the New Fall Sitcoms
“One of the biggest, and certainly one of the most attention-getting, trends of the new fall TV season has been the bevy of smart, sexually assured, twenty-something lady sitcoms, with each network bringing a contender to the schedule: CBS has 2 Broke Girls with Kat Dennings (premiering tonight); Fox has New Girl with Zooey Deschanel (premiering tomorrow); NBC has Whitney with Whitney Cummings (premiering Thursday); and there are more on the way for mid-season.”
…
A related trend, but one that has been getting less attention for the obvious reasons — the shows are not as good, and their stars don’t look as good — are the bitter-man comedies: Tim Allen’s Home Improvement follow-up, Last Man Standing; ABC’s Man Up, which could be called How to Be a Father; CBS’s How to Be a Gentleman, in which Kevin Dillon advises a polite, spineless fellow on how to be b-utch and, come mid-season, ABC’s magnificently wretched cross-dressing comedy Work It. These Sad Man Sitcoms are about how confusing, difficult, and often emasculating it is to be a man in the days of the mancession. The guys in the second batch of shows are in crisis because they have found themselves living in a world that belongs to the women in the first batch of shows — and they don’t like it one bit.
…
In Last Man Standing (October 11, ABC), Tim Allen plays Mike, the father of three daughters. His career taking photographs for a wilderness catalogue is in jeopardy because young men aren’t as interested in crossbows as they used to be. Meanwhile, his wife’s career as a business executive is thriving. Mike rants in his vlog, Howard Beale–style, “What happened to men!” as he complains that guys these days can’t survive in the wilderness, catch big fish, or change tires. The fellas in Man Up … and How to be a Gentleman … sure can’t do these things.

Man Up is, more or less, a show about three Phil Dunphys: well-meaning, often hapless fellas trying to figure out how to project authority in homes and relationships thoroughly dominated by their female partners. In How to Be a Gentleman, an effete magazine writer named Andrew is chastised by Kevin Dillon’s muscle-head character Burt, “You know everything about being a gentleman, and nothing about being a man,” before beginning to inaugurate him into, more or less, the Tim Allen school of manliness.
…
But the difference is still palpable: Last Man Standing, Man Up, and How to Be a Gentleman are all coming from a place of fear and bitterness. They are predicated on the idea that once, not so long ago, there was a code, a way to be a man that everyone understood, and now that code is gone, leaving Y chromosomes isolated and flailing in a tech-savvy world dominated by women. … Whether it’s true or false, both sets of shows seem to agree that it’s way more fun to be a woman than a man right now. Certainly, after watching all these sitcoms, you’d think they have a point.”

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A terrible double standard exists for men today: society says be a man, but if men assert themselves as men, they are accused of being misogynist. They are warned not to be effete, but when they assert their masculinity, they are accused of being “homophobic.” If you read the article above in its entirety, you will see both those double-standards brought up.

In Christian culture, the situation is even worse. The young men of today have been raised in this culture and if they become saved at a later time in life, chances are they will have been raised by a feminist mother and a ‘hapless’ father. They have to learn not only how to be a Christian, but how to be a man. Christian men are expected to lead their families, and so many of the young men of today simply don’t know how to do that.

In many of the liberal Youth Ministries, younger men are taught a soft, romantic, effete Jesus who is sentimental love at all times. Never is wrath, hardness, fighting for the faith, or stalwart soldiering brought up.

Sample lyrics from the popular Christian band Jesus Culture exemplify this. The song excerpt below was written in 2012 and it is called Be My Love. You would not know it is a Christian song if you heard it until toward the end when God is mentioned. The only tell-tale in the written form is the capital Y on the word You until you read toward the end that the song is about God. Event he promotional shots show effete men with long hair and earrings, wearing androgynous clothing and looking like the female lead singer.

Where there is no love
will You be my love
Yeah, yeah

[CHORUS:]
I can’t find anyone like You
That satisfies quite like You do
And my heart is burning for You
Yes, my heart is burning for You

Here is another Jesus Culture song written in 2012 called I Belong to You, giving God permission to love us or something.

“I Belong To You”

[VERSE 1:]
You can be the One that steals my heart
With just a simple thought of who You are
Let Your light shine in the darkest parts
Let Your love fill the world

[VERSE 2:]
You can be the fire down in my soul
That I can’t contain, that I can’t control
Would You fill me up to overflow
Let Your love fill the world

[CHORUS:]
And I belong to You
Forever, I belong to You

[VERSE 3:]
Let Your Words be like a burning flame
Come in close to touch my heart again
The whole earth trembles at the sound of Your name
Let Your love fill the world

[VERSE 4:]
All I want is more of You
Your breath is life, Your word is truth
Your glory here is bursting through
Let Your love fill the world

[BRIDGE:]
And You have set my heart on fire
My love and my desire
Only for You

And as Your glory fills this place
Your love we will embrace
Only for You, for You

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari, Bosom Buddies, 1980

It’s sentimental drivel that means nothing.

Is it any wonder where the young men of today are emasculated in society and softened in church, that when they create a family they do not know how to lead? Media today doesn’t help. Men are either superheroes with powers (Spiderman or Terminator), or they are effete Tootsies or Bosom Buddies. In the latter two, men dressed up as women in order to get an apartment or to get employment, and if you think those are simply culturally irrelevant references because Tootsie the movie and Bosom Buddies the tv show came out decades ago, the 2012 ABC television show “Work It” featured as character development, starting in the first episode, men who dress as women to attain employment learning how to be more “sensitive”. The message is, the only way to be successful is to be a women.

Ben Koldyke & Amaury Nolasco, Work It, 2012

A study referred to in the Guardian UK article, ‘Masculinity crisis’ leads to family murder, according to new study conducted by Birmingham City University criminologists has linked today’s crisis of masculinity to fathers murdering their own children, or family annihilationists. Quoted in the Guardian, project leader Professor David Wilson said, “some men are unable to come to terms with different and developing notions of the institution of the family, where women increasingly play a much more dynamic role than they had in the past”.

Aaron D. Wolf wrote in 2005: “Every definition of masculinity into which our Lord Jesus Christ does not fit belongs in the rubbish heap. Indeed, there could be no greater example of a man than He. Contrary to modern portrayals, Jesus was neither a sensitive metrosexual nor a macho-macho man. The tenderness that He displayed toward those whom He loved (including His enemies) was paternal and sacrificial, focused not on self-gratification or expression but on the real needs of those He came to save.”

“These familiar strains from the popular hymn “In the Garden” represent the modern American imagination of the essence of Christianity: a romantic fantasy in which a chivalric Jesus rescues me from my own loneliness and despair and fills all of my emotional needs. This effeminate picture of the Christian life, from the dramatic conversion experience to the long walks in the garden alone with “Jesus,” has produced generations of effeminate Christian men who either allow themselves to be consumed by their imaginary “walks with Jesus” or else drift away from church altogether, knowing that their best efforts at spiritual courtship will fall well short of those of the women who now, more than ever, fill the pews of America’s churches.”

Fathers and Mothers, raise up your boys to be boys and the girls to be girls. Jesus set out roles for us. Elder men and women have roles. Widows have roles. Husbands and wives have roles. Children have roles. Church members have roles. The bible is our life guide, not the movies and not television.

“Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.” (1 Peter 3:7)

“That the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:17)

“He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive,” (1 Timothy 3:4)

“For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.” (Ephesians 5:23)

“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.” (1 Corinthians 16:13)

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"Infomercials for dictators", or How the Media is now our Enemy

Posted on October 3, 2012 by elizabethprata

I read a headline the other day I didn’t follow up on. I’m following up on it now, because I read a second headline that startled me even more. The first headline was from Pat Caddell, who said that the “press is the enemy of the American people”. Pat Caddell is a former Democratic pollster. He said in his speech in part,

“it is one thing for the news to have a biased view, but It is another thing to specifically decide that you will not tell the American people information they have a right to know.”

“But all I want to conclude to this is that we face a fundamental danger here. The fundamental danger is this: I talked about the defense of the First Amendment. The press’s job is to stand in the ramparts and protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from a government and from organized governmental power. When they desert those ramparts and decide that they will now become active participants, that their job is not simply to tell you who you may vote for, and who you may not, but, worse—and this is the danger of the last two weeks—what truth that you may know, as an American, and what truth you are not allowed to know, they have, then, made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy, and, in my opinion, made themselves the enemy of the American people. And it is a threat to the very future of this country if that—we allow this stuff to go on. We have crossed a whole new and frightening slide on the slippery slope this last two weeks, and it needs to be talked about.”

The reference to “the last two weeks was about the terrorist attack in Libya, killing an American Ambassador, and the subsequent refusal of the White House to admit it was a terrorist attack, the collusion of the media to not press the issue, nor even report on the many embassy attacks after the Libyan attack.

I agree with Caddell that the media is the Peoples’ enemy. The Media is colluding with the ones the media is supposed to inform us about and protect us from by giving good information. We cannot make informed choices if we are not informed. We saw that clearly in the 2007-2008 Presidential campaign. Just ask Joe the Plumber.

I lived in a small town in the 90s. There was one weekly newspaper in addition to the daily big city paper. The little paper reported on the doings around town, the activities of the council and school board, had a religious column in it, as well as the obits and lunch menus. You know the kind of paper.

Well, when it started in the 70s, it was a good, activist, journalistic paper. It did its job with courage and without favor. But as the 80s wore on it became tame and innocuous, but at least it did no harm. When the paper was taken over by its new editor in the 90s, it became a lapdog organ for local government and a club to browbeat active citizens. It published without impunity innuendo, sarcasm, and outright lies, if it thought it would help their friends in town hall. The paper even moved into a town building, where it got its rent for free! The whole thing sucked swamp water.

Well, I was not active nor interested in town doings for most of the decade. I traveled widely with my husband and much of the time we were not at home. When I was, I didn’t read the rag.

But then I did get involved through no volition of my own. The government came to us, and it wasn’t here to help us. So we sought redress for our grievance through the regular means available to all citizens, committee advocacy, positive change through petitioning, and began a process of a charter change. [The charter was the governing document of the town]. All this was outlined in normal methods available to any citizen, However, most normal citizens never availed themselves of those means, due to the browbeating they’d get in the paper. We ignored that and went forward.

As the issues wore on and I knew the truth because I was living it, and read the lies the paper was producing, and wondered about the gap, I mulled over what to do. As soon as our government issue was concluded (satisfactorily to my side), I decided I’d start a newspaper to compete with the monopoly-stranglehold going on in my town. Citizens were being hurt, freedom of speech was not allowed, and the government and media had too close a relationship. This is never a good thing for a democracy. I started my paper to shoehorn in a crowbar between the coziness of the other paper and the local government, which was run by the way, via nepotism and patronage.

My paper was successful and won awards. It grew economically as the advertiser base expanded. In content, I sought to educate the citizenry as to their rights and duties, to put the local government on notice they were being watched, fairly, but watched nonetheless, to show what journalistic standards should be, and to reflect a vibrant and lovely community back to itself.

The other paper did not go gently into that good night. They employed every dirty trick, every lowbrow act, and every mean thing they could to subdue us. I would not be cowed, and eventually I ran the other paper into the ground. They sold out and then I sold the paper and moved to GA. My work there was done, lol.

I was saved by Jesus during that 8 years. As I grew in faith I began to realize the Lord’s provision was such that the event (and there was much more I haven’t told you, including spiritual warfare!) was a microcosm for what went on nationally in 2007-2008. During the first Obama campaign, we saw a media abdicate its responsibility to the citizens, collude with government, exist by nepotism, monopoly, and patronage, fail to properly vet the candidates or inform the electorate as to the issues in a fair manner, and browbeat citizens, companies, or candidates who didn’t conform to the media’s standards or ideals. Just ask Joe the Plumber.

When you have a media that refuses to reflect the society back to itself you have a society with a skewed view. An uninformed society. An apathetic society. All these things are anathema to an active democracy. In that sense, the media as the Fourth Estate has become the enemy of freedom, a treasonous entity set to destroy us. I am convinced of this. Just look at the words of Mr Caddell.

Now I want to bring you to another article I read today. As you read the excerpt I’ll post, keep in mind that America’s Fifth Fleet docks at Bahrain. We NEED Bahrain to maintain our presence in the Gulf. On Russia Today’s website, they published the following:

‘Bahrain buys favorable CNN content’
“Amid a violent crackdown on a popular uprising, Bahrain paid CNN to get favorable coverage, says a former reporter who believes her documentary on the protests there was censored by the network. What CNN is doing is they are essentially creating what some people have termed “infomercials for dictators.” And that’s the sponsored content that they are airing on CNN International that is actually being paid for by regimes and governments. And this violates every principle of journalistic ethics, because we’re supposed to be watchdogs on these governments. We are not supposed to allow them to be a paying customer as journalists. And that’s the issue here – that CNN is feeding, then, this propaganda to the public and not fairly disclosing to the public that this is sponsored content.”

I’ve often thought about the Tribulation and media. As we watched the Iran uprising and then the Arab Spring on Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook, I know, and you know, that the unfettered access to citizen journalism will be the first thing to go. The Main Stream Media is already gone. Dear ones, do not even trust Fox News. Pastor JD Farag noticed a distinct shift in tone regarding Israel over the last year and a half, and he noted this may be due to the fact that News Corp.’s second-largest shareholder, after the Murdoch family, is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the nephew of Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, and one of the world’s richest men.

The powers that be will NOT allow people to express themselves. Christians certainly will be shut off.

I read an article about Duck Dynasty today. Duck Dynasty is a reality TV show on A&E that follows the Robertson family, makers of duck calls. The family has a staunch faith in Jesus. Each show ends with a prayer around the family dinner table, and though each and every prayer is ended with the phrase, “In Jesus’ name” each and every time, the editors chop that part out. Hardly any depiction of their faith is given light of day. The folks on the show do not swear, so to spice things up, the editors bleeped a couple of non-curse words anyway! The article is here, and it is really good in showing how the Robertsons, fervent and relentless evangelizers, plan to get around the censorship.

If media won’t even allow a faithful family, on a hit show (which means America WANTS to see the Robertsons) to express their faith by saying Jesus, what do you think it will be like during the time of total sin, the Tribulation? Total censorship. Total collusion with power-brokers, and what you see on tv and in the movies and in the papers will be at your peril. Satan has surely claimed Hollywood. I think we all recognize that. The media IS our enemy.

The Tribulation will be a time for total sin to saturate the world. That means every organization will also be total sin. Media included. Revelation 18 shows the mourning of the world’s merchants, kings, captains, and seafarers at the fall of Babylon. Revelation 17 shows the death of the world’s religious system. So if the economic organization is total sin, media will not escape that economic death. Their collusion by filthy lucre to the governments will be exposed and the cause of death on their certificate will be “FORNICATION.” Their prostituting of themselves may seem sweet to them now, but it will cost them heavily on the LORD’S Day.

The media is an enemy of the state, taking money from dictators to produce infomercials. Read/watch/listen at your own risk.

How wonderful we can turn to the bible for all truth! I find it exhilarating that the world’s headlines are in the bible right now. The things the dictators are saying are almost word for word in the bible. The events we see happening are lining up exactly. We can take heart that His word is not polluted, but pure. He is the Sinless Groom, glowing and holy, and His word is the same. The bible is the enemy of the world but is the friend, comforter, and sustainer of the Christian who seeks truth. Seek it not in the news media, but in the holy scriptures. It does a body good!