Men & Feminism: The Fall of Man

“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body.”
-Ephesians 5:22-33

Many Christian church denominations cut this out of wedding ceremonies, but it is read at every Orthodox Christian wedding. The reminder is that men – for all their faults – were designed by God to guard over and be a steward of everything on earth. Including women. People get uncomfortable with the “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands” part, completely ignoring the fact that the very next paragraph tells men to lay down their lives for their wives and do everything in service to them.

Though they’ll deny it every time, feminists think men want to control women. Certainly there are horrible and abusive men out there, but by demonizing the every move of every single man for the past fifty or so years, we’ve effectively erased, forgotten, and sullied their very purpose in this life: to protect us, to guide us, and to love us as Christ protected, guided, and loved the Church. And let’s not forget that Christ submitted to one of the most brutal deaths for the sake of the Church, willingly, and with love.

Looking at feminism today you see a war of sorts raging between the sexes. Feminism, though accomplishing a smattering of goods, has ultimately loomed as an evil towards men and their role in society for more than a century. It has told women to abandon femininity and men to abandon masculinity. In this way, feminism has in some ways reversed the Ephesians 5 structure – telling women to be and behave like men, and men to roll over in deference to women. The problem is, feminist women do not expect to make any sacrifice for any man ever. So we’re left with self-serving women and broken, purposeless men bullied into submission and made mute by the raging woke mob.

Truly a mess.

An Interesting Dichotomy

Modern feminism can’t seem to decide what it wants. Does it want women to embrace the masculine approach to life, or does it want to demonize masculinity and all it stands for? It seemingly tries to do both, while completely and ironically leaving femininity and all of its strengths in the dust. In its struggle to maintain this incongruous way of thinking, men have been slowly demoralized, left in a spot where they can seem to do no right; if they treat women like men (the way they seem to want to be treated) they are called toxic at best and accused of sexual misconduct at worst. But if they are simpering and spineless, allowing the woman to take care of everything in the relationship, then they are seen as weak and undesirable. Worse, they are easily manipulated and their strength of character is removed.

So how do men win this contest of feminism’s whims?

Strangely (and unfortunately for feminists) the answer is: be men.

A World Built By Men For Women

Like it or not, but this world was built by men. And that’s not a bad thing. Because look around you, point to something in your immediate vicinity that you rely on and, chances are, it was conceptualized, invented, improved, and manufactured by men. That’s not to say everything in the world is the product of men and men alone – women have made a decent number of contributions in almost every area of innovation, science, literature, etc. But you can thank a  man for the car you drive, the roads you drive on, the building you’re sitting in, the plants you grow, the foods you eat, the kitchen gadgets, the clothes, the paper, the sewers, computers, phones, pens, heat, electricity, and tools.

The most beautiful part? Men didn’t do all of this because they were bored. They did it to support and improve the lives of women. For thousands of years, men have kept the world turning in the name of nothing less than women.

“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only – and that is to support the ultimate career. ” ― C.S. Lewis

It’s a classic literary and cinematic trope: they did it for the girl. Women and the love born of femininity is a strong motivator and has been for all of history. We’ve all seen the war movie where the dirty, bloody man who’s thousands of miles from home, sitting in the trenches as bombs burst overhead, pulls a photo of a woman out of his pocket. We’ve all watched as he uses the strength imparted by the woman’s smile and her personal note scribbled on the back as motivation to keep moving, keep fighting. We all nod, maybe tear up, and agree that he is fighting for a worthy cause.

So why are we letting feminism tell men that they are useless, selfish, toxic, and inherently oppressive?

Why aren’t we instead using femininity and the powerful, historically collaborative and complementary relationship between men and women to build something stronger and fight for something better?

The Fall of (Wo)Man

My maybe not so clever play on original sin is not by accident. Mankind initiated its fall from communion with God just as much as womankind initiated its own fall from communion with men.

The great irony is that, by calling strong, masculine men toxic, feminists have created the very monster they feared.

This contradictory way of thinking has landed us in a mess where men can do no right, women are unhappier than ever, and toxic relationships between men and women are accepted as the norm.

The standard for all men has been stripped away. And when there is no standard, no model of good, right, Godly masculinity, then where will men turn? What will they accomplish? For whom will they work, sacrifice, live, and die? Probably themselves. And nothing good has ever come from self-serving individuals.

“We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” — C.S. Lewis