Maggie Gallagher: "Do We Care About Boys?"

"We want husbands and fathers for ourselves or for our children who are confident, successful males and good family men willing and able to work hard to support those families"

If the roles were reversed, everyone would scream, "Hey!! - why should an onus to supprt others be put on women?!"

-ax

"We want husbands and fathers for ourselves or for our children who are confident, successful males and good family men willing and able to work hard to support those families"

What are humans for? I agree that we should be seen as ends unto ourselves. At the exact same time, is there anything more pathetic than one who is "useless" to others, regardless of sex? Hey, we all gotta pitch in. Nothing worse than a layabout or worse, a human sponge. [One may have the right to be a layabout but has no right to lay claim to someone else's food, for example, just because he or she is hungry, but assuming they can do so, are just unwilling to work for it.]

In the matter of rights, I feel all people ought to be seen as ends unto themselves. But that doesn't confer on people the right to presume on the substance of others. So one has rights to be seen, for example, as innocent until proven guilty (witness the recent reported case in Canada and how a man was presumed guilty and beaten by police - he was certainly far from presumed innocent or viewed as an end unto himself), one has no right to assume that because one has certain fundamental rights, other rights are thus conferred on him or her. (The right to own property is held by many to be a fundamental human right, though exactly what kind of property is often debated - that is where the splits historically have occurred and the question of property and absolute vs. conferred rights have become the stuff of revolution.)

The right to lay claim to another's property without a supported claim of right usually (but not always) based on a violation of some fundamental right (e.g.: compensation for a violation of right inflicted prior to the claim) is generally denied in modern societies. It is hard to argue that a man's labor is not his property, or the fruits thereof. A woman who wants a man to conform to a certain mode of living wherein he routinely transfers the fruits of his labor (by law, convention, or presumption) is in essence asking for this.

Do women have the right to insist that men exist or should function to a particular end for women, such as to be good providers or otherwise "good men" based on some other standard? No, they don't - for the same reason men do not have that right vis-a-vis women or other men. Can they ask for men to assume such roles? Sure. Should they attempt to coerce men into such roles? No. Can they try? Yes. This is why men must be on their guard in how women view men and how individual women believe and behave towards us, collectively and in our personal lives. Ms. Gallagher can ask for men to be a certain way all she wants, and for whatever reason. But it's men collectively and in our personal lives that have the RIGHT to CHOOSE (oh, it feels so good to type that) what we will do with ourselves in life and vis-a-vis our own identities. This is something it seems modern societies have lost touch with and, IMJ, is key to us as men getting our individual and collective rights back.

So does Ms. Gallagher think a man is useless or that a group of men are useless because of this or that reason? Sorry if she feels that way, but the people whose greatest stake as well as right to have input on this matter is the people most directly involved and comprise the substance of the topic. These are boys and men.

Still, I am glad to see she wrote an article sympathetic to the plight of today's boys. Indeed, if our world will be a pleasanter place to live in in the next few decades, things around how our boys are raised and educated have to get a lot better a lot faster.

The fact is that it will always be predominantly men who support their families financially - women don't go looking for a mister mom. I was worded it poorly - I was just questioning that one aspect of her mentality, i.e., whether she sees men as people in themselves, as you've indicated.

As I've said before, the vast majority of women are self-serving, regardless of the existence of any 'gynocentric' cultural environment. The current atmosphere just makes it easier for them to get what they want.

-ax

A poster on another forum once said, A traditionalist woman arguing with a feminist is like two slavemasters debating whip techniques.