True Grown-ups and a little on male emasculation [UPDATE]

A few days ago Crusader Rabbit linked to two articles related to the website A Voice for Men titled Feminazi "journalist" gets her ass kicked. Big time.  One was an attack on the material contained on the site and the other was an attack on the female journalist who dared to attack the site.  They think the Voice for Men author is winning the argument with the female journalist, however it is early days as she has said that she will go through the assertions she's made in her opening article in more detail in the near future, and therefore there is not a lot of substance to what she's said.  Yet.  I'm sure it will come.

I've been thinking about the issues that were brought up by both articles over the last several days.  As there is a bit of a cross-over in the material that I've been reading and this subculture of men who feel disadvantaged and discriminated against by just being men, I thought I'd broaden the perspective a little.

In a 1903 illustration ironically titled "The Weaker Sex", a tiny, pleading man was examined, under glass, by four beauties who poked at him with a knitting needle.

As a result of my research over the last couple of days, I found that in the United States more than one hundred years ago, this idea of men being emasculated by women was being promoted in the media. There were many images published, such as the illustration above, of tiny men being toyed with by giant women.   It all changed again during the WWI era when women suddenly became images of liberty and nurturers again.  Men obviously don't go out to fight in wars because women are poking them with knitting needles, they go out to fight because they love us and their families and will do what it takes to protect us and what they value.

The symbolic meaning of the big female-little male characters in J. C. Leyendecker's "Weapons for Liberty" poster was doubled through costuming. In this allegorical scene, the crowned, flag-wrapped woman was Liberty, while the kneeling little boy protected Liberty through preparation. The smaller figure provided the action of the picture. What's more, dressed as a Boy Scout, he represented an organization that strove to protect future men from "feminizing" influences.

I found it very interesting on how the images of women during the pre-WWI era acted as propaganda, seeking to subtly influence the culture's view of women.  Considering that both men and women working together is what makes a strong culture, this cultivation of a war between the sexes seeking to show how one dominates the other from the past was most disturbing.

And so back to Voice for Men.  One of the articles I read there was Feminists: demented, stunned or cultists, whereby the author concludes that radical, feminist women consider that women are like children, and finishes off by stating that, "Women need to grow up" these women need to grow up*.  Which got me thinking about what it actually means to be a grown up, which was the original purpose of this post, until I got distracted with explaining the background.

My definition of a Grown Up

A grown up is a person who does not put their needs, wants and desires first. They are more interested in looking after those they are responsible for than looking after themselves, even to self-sacrifice. In short, they die to themselves so that others might live.

The young child is the very opposite of this. They need to be trained to think of others, encouraged to share and to feel empathy for those they might hurt. As they get older, they need to be taught that they are not always right, that when they do wrong, they need to apologise and take responsibility for their actions. And they need to see this way of being modelled by their parents.

It's a long, hard battle with every child, and sadly, many never make it to true adulthood, which is not really tested until that person becomes a parent. At that point, some will realise that their sole purpose in life is not just self-gratification. Expectations from society do play a part, but on the whole it comes down to character and what was taught by parents. If parents don't teach their children by word and example and don't know how to counter all the false messaging from society and the media, then it's hit and miss as to whether their children will ever grow up.

Getting to my final point - how do you tell if a person has really reached adulthood? Simple, my standard is that they know it's not all about them.  And from my reading of the Voice For Men website, that's not the position they appear take.

UPDATE ( 16 Jan 2012, 9:43am)
* This was a mistake.  I started off writing this post after thinking of the phrase, "Women need to grow up", as a concept.  It was put into the post very early on.  It took me a while to find the article that I thought it was from.  Writing this post, I altered it very drastically a number of times, trying to make it less attacking and more charitable, over a couple of days.  I do remember looking at the phrase, thinking about how to make it not look like a quote, but then I forgot when I posted it.  I'm going to leave the phrase in there using the strike out, just so it can be seen what people have been reacting to when criticising this post.