“We have escaped like a bird out of the fowler’s snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth” (Ps 124:7-8). This blog site is committed to helping men escape the fowler’s snare of the constant laments of radical feminism. While equality between male and female is assumed, I am concerned about the effects of what Christian Hoff Sommers calls ‘fainting couch feminism,” which views women as, “fragile flowers who require safe spaces, trigger warnings, and special protection from micr0-invalidations.” There is the belief among these feminists that the most destructive words a boy can hear growing up are “be a man.”
My concern is that men are lagging behind in our society when it comes to male liberation. Women have done a lot of their homework on this issue. The challenge is for men to respond in kind. It is a new day for both male and female. We can’t go back to the old patterns of relating. Instead of being reactive, defensive or passive, men need to do their homework. Otherwise they will allow themselves to be caught in the “fowler’s snare.”
Many men don’t even know they are caught in the snare since they have not been intentional about coming home to their God given masculine soul. It is out of fear and insecurity that feminists expect men to be more like them. Listen to what one feminist observer wrote after the election, “Many who care about the place of women in American society are gripped by fears that men will now feel they have a free pass to demean women at home or in the workplace, that women’s heath, economic security and reproductive rights will be dealt sever blows.”
What can this snare feel like? Notice I use the word feeling- a kind of inner foreboding that is felt in the soul. Listen to what is deep in your soul, not how you feel obligated or conditioned to act in the gender wars.. First, the shame of being a man. While guilt for wrong behavior and attitudes is appropriate, even remorse for how men have wronged women, shame is crippling. It is demeaning to a man. Men today desperately need to know the affirmation of their masculine soul in the presence of a loving heavenly Father. You are loved for who you are, not for how you might perform.
Secondly, feelings of be the victim. Some man could be reading this blog today, having to admit that he feels victimized, that is, wrongly faulted, simply for being a man at his place of employment. He shares space with others that has been feminized by the assumption that men are to blame. He has become passive, playing the victim, thus violating his masculine soul.
Thirdly, a kind of floating anger and bitterness. If a man has not done his work of being liberated, their will be a defensive response that goes underground. His anger is like trying to keep an inflated ball under water. It takes a lot of work not to let his true feeling known. He comes home exhausted for just surviving another day.
One more feeling to consider; that of grief and sadness. As I have said before, grief can be mistaken for anger. The unhealed soul of a man can often dwell in a deep well of grieving. I know! I watch my father in his last years live in this silent suffering of grief. It caused me to become aware of my own need to grieve as a man.
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