Why do we have so many guys from the college campus to the corporate C-Suite to the Hollywood and political elite dishonoring and devaluing women? As stories of boys behaving badly continue, we can no longer only ask what is wrong with them. This isn’t just a story about an individual. It’s about a sizable segment of the male population in America.
Our culture is scarred with the need for males to leave boyhood and become real men. It’s not only the truth behind the anecdotal stories of the #metoo movement. It is also the empirical statistics like males being 3.5x more likely to die of suicide. And look at the gender of every mass shooting suspect.
Males in our culture are in crisis about a life that mainstream civilization conditions us to mindlessly follow after. Consider these cultural touchpoints that help explain why so many men devalue and dishonor so many women.
Our culture’s males aren’t saying “no” to other males.
There are 45-year-old boys and there are 15-year-old men. One of the things that separates a men from the boys is his willingness to say something unpopular. I’m tired of hearing celebrities say “I never knew he was doing that.” Please. Yes you did. You were just too weak to do something about it. Male passivity in refusing to speak truth to other males has become a cultural norm. The true men among us need to rise up and get comfortable saying, “I see what you’re doing, and it isn’t acceptable.”
Our culture objectifies women.
Why does USA Today contain a standard feature of 100+ pics of cheerleaders around the NFL? Those women are earning a living. Giving men regular and unnecessary reminders of how women look and seem to exist to turn you on doesn’t help a man reinforce a healthy and proper stereotype of women.
Hitler succeeded in turning Germany against the jews by objectifying them as rats. Plantation owners objectified Africans as subhuman. When women are seen as sex objects in sports pages, they lose. Our culture has done a great job at conditioning men to look at women as objects of pleasure.
Our culture’s men lack healthy outlets for adventure.
When a man pursues a woman, it’s a hunt. For many overworked and under-stimulated men, this is the only adventure they will experience in the course of their year. Lack of healthy adventure, coupled with the grind of life, makes us more prone to the quick-hitting unhealthy adventure of inappropriately coming onto a woman. One of the reasons a man pursues a woman he shouldn’t is that he doesn’t have anything more stimulating or fulfilling to pursue.
Our culture has lost the meaning of sex.
This sounds crazy, but the main reason for the existence of sex is to create children in the context of a healthy union. Our culture is increasingly running away from the blessing of children, and in its place, sex has become a toy for pleasure. Once this happens, a man begins to view inappropriate behavior as innocent pleasure. Then he’s surprised that someone has been offended. After all, it’s only a toy.
Consider the legend of Hugh Hefner that caused our culture to mourn the passing of a sexual “liberator.” No. Playboy has devalued millions of women and helped men believe that every woman wants him. Training men that sex is a solo sport, while facilitating millions of masturbations, isn’t healthy nor helpful. Only in a culture like ours—one that trains and applauds selfish sexual activity, will we have our current crisis with no answer.
As a parent of girls and a boy and as a pastor who has witnessed the raising of thousands, I can tell you that the modes of instruction and discipline should vary a bit among the sexes. We are unwilling as a culture to recognize this reality and to act accordingly. In turn, we aren’t turning our immature boys into healthy men. An out-of-control male wreaks more havoc than an out-of-control female, not just because of his physical power, but also because of his disproportionate power in our culture.
At my son’s birth, I held his little hand and he greeted me with a stream of urine that drenched my forearm. I thought to myself, “This cute little guy isn’t going to be so little in the years ahead. If I don’t raise him right, he’s going to piss all over me and others.” Young males need strong boundaries as well as rigorous environments that stretch them. These parenting choices are often frowned upon by society at large.
It is time for us as a society to rethink how we’re raising our boys to become men, and how we’re encouraging men to revert to boyish behavior. The answers and the solutions aren’t easy, but they’re necessary. The women in our culture deserve better.