Here's (for me, anyway) a new wrinkle on an old argument. It is often said that women civilize men. Dr. David Pence has written a book arguing no, they don't. Women domesticate men, he says. Men have to civilize themselves. He's not using "domesticated" in a perjorative since (not: "whipped"), but argues the distinction is vital and the two --domestication and civilization-- may occasionally come into conflict. In a short review of the book, Anthony Esolen of Mere Comments writes:
People used to know that when a man abandons his brothers for the comfort of hearth and home, he puts the tribe or the city at risk. Hence the ubiquitous legends of men who lose their strength when they fall to the lassitude of sexual pleasure: Troy had been better off had Paris never been born.
Hercules & Samson come to mind as well. Pence argues that there is a "missing icon" of manhood in our culture --the band of brothers willing to bear burdens in order to accomplish great tasks for the common good. I have to think this through, but I think he's put his finger here on what I call the feminization of culture. It's more the domestication of culture --no one can look beyond his own nose. Here's the interesting conclusion to Esolen's post:
Most men do still know better. But they have been domesticated too well; they are disunited and helpless; the locks of the fraternity have been shorn. Witness the vast nation of Canada, once a land of hardy farmers and pioneers, now about to suffer the imposition of marriage for the jaded denizens of postcivilized Toronto and Montreal. And they sit, these Canadian men, their natural inclination to band together to form and protect villages, towns, and cities, all but forgotten. There they sit, helpless as Samson, eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves. God help us, let that hair grow back.
