• The Miseducation of the American Boy – Toxic Masculinity and the Brokeness of Boyhood by P. Orenstein

The Miseducation of the American Boy – Toxic Masculinity and the Brokeness of Boyhood by P. Orenstein

The Miseducation of the American Boy

Snippets:

…I’ve spent two years talking with boys across America—more than 100 of them between the ages of 16 and 21—about masculinity, sex, and love: about the forces, seen and unseen, that shape them as men.

They [the boys and young men the author interviewed] considered their female classmates to be smart and competent, entitled to their place on the athletic field and in school leadership, deserving of their admission to college and of professional opportunities.

They all had female friends; most had gay male friends as well.

That was a huge shift from what you might have seen 50, 40, maybe even 20 years ago.

They could also easily reel off the excesses of masculinity. They’d seen the headlines about mass shootings, domestic violence, sexual harassment, campus rape, presidential Twitter tantrums, and Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

A Big Ten football player I interviewed bandied about the term toxic masculinity. “Everyone knows what that is,” he said, when I seemed surprised.

Yet when asked to describe the attributes of “the ideal guy,” those same boys appeared to be harking back to 1955. Dominance. Aggression. Rugged good looks (with an emphasis on height). Sexual prowess. Stoicism. Athleticism. Wealth (at least some day).

• Even Breadwinning Wives Don’t Get Equality at Home by H.A. Rao (2019)

Even Breadwinning Wives Don’t Get Equality at Home (2019) by H. A. Rao

Even Breadwinning Wives Don’t Get Equality at Home 

When Americans think about fixing gender equality, they tend to focus on the workplace. But gender equality for women still lags in another realm: their own houses.

Americans are making major strides toward gender equality. Women have surpassed men in obtaining college degrees.

Women have flocked to many formerly male-dominated occupations such as law and medicine.

In 2018, a record number of women candidates were elected to Congress. And high-school seniors today are more likely than their counterparts 40 years ago to say they strongly believe that women should have the same opportunities as men to succeed in school and at work.

But gender equality for women still lags in another realm: their own home.

• Blog Problems – May Be Migrating to New Host – Word Press Blogs Not Allowing Editing After Publishing and No (or Unpredictable) Access to Blog Admin Area

Word Press must have made some changes behind the scenes to their blogs or what not since the second or so week of January 2020, because more often than not, in the past few days, I’ve not been able to edit posts after publishing them (which is a HUGE problem),

….and, I’ve not been able to access the Blog’s Admin area (which is an even bigger problem).

For the past week, my Tweets should be showing up in the “Twitter” widget that appears on this blog’s right hand column, but it has not been showing up at all.

I am in the process of researching new free blog hosts.

I may be migrating to one. If I move my blog to a new host, I will announce it on Twitter, and maybe over on Wartburg Watch and/or Spiritual Sounding Board.

• Blocked by Complementarian Owen Strachan For Two Benign Tweets That Contradicted His Worldview About Women and Masculinity

Blocked by Complementarian Owen Strachan For Two Benign Tweets That Contradicted His Worldview About Women and Masculinity

I don’t think Owen Strachan realizes or appreciates I have more than one Twitter account, LOL.

Here is the tweet that got me blocked today by Owen Strachan – well, my two replies to it:

Link: Tweet by Owen Strachan edit: link is to my Tweet which is right below Strachan’s

Edit 2 – let me try this again:
Link: Owen Strachan’s Tweet

I left him two replies, and I replied to one or two other people.  I was pretty subdued and polite, for me, and yet, I was blocked anyhow; read on for the story…

• Rape Law After Harvey Weinstein by S. Green

Rape Law After Harvey Weinstein by S. Green

I see some parallels and applicability to the topics of C.S.A. (Clergy Sex Abuse), complementarian teachings to women about sex and marriage, and how churches mistreat victims of sexual in the Christian church, as the issues discussed in the article below.

Rape Law After Harvey Weinstein

by S. Green

In the #MeToo era, should we see sexual contact between the powerful and the relatively powerless as inherently coercive?

January 4, 2019

…Mr. Weinstein’s alleged crimes and misconduct can be divided into three broad categories. The first consists of physically forcing a victim to endure a sexual assault against her will.

This is what the actress Annabella Sciorra, for example, alleges Mr. Weinstein did to her in 1993, when she says he attacked her in her Manhattan apartment. If proven, such conduct would clearly constitute rape.

A second category involves inducing a victim into sex by using coercive, non-violent threats – of the “have sex with me or you’ll never work in this town again” sort. Conduct like this typically wouldn’t have been prosecuted before the mid-1990s.

Today, it routinely is.

Legal authorities now share a broad consensus that sex without valid consent is rape, and that “consent” obtained by coercive threat isn’t valid.

What won’t be on trial in January, however, is a third and more problematic category of sexual misconduct, of the sort that not only Mr. Weinstein but countless other men have been accused of during the #MeToo movement.

• New Atheism Is Old News by J. Stonestreet

New Atheism Is Old News by J. Stonestreet

Even though I’ve been in a faith crisis the last few years – I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve rejected the Christian faith in total, but I have doubts about how true or useful it is – I’m not an atheist, either.

(Online, I tend to attract some atheists who sometimes seem to think I’m one of them.)

Concerning the variety of atheism referred to as “new atheism,” which started around 15 – 18 years ago, I always found its adherents to be very condescending, arrogant, and rude.

The new atheists are no better than the fundamentalist Christians and Muslims they criticize (ie., in that being very rigid in thinking, arrogant, and unpleasant) and so are not going to convert anyone to their worldview.

I am relieved to see that this “new atheist” movement may finally be dying off, though I’m not thrilled to see it replaced by  hyper rabid partisan political stances.

(I am not in agreement with all views expressed in this piece by J. Stonestreet or in the articles linked to at The Guardian and ARC. I agree on some points, but certainly not all.)

New Atheism is Old News by J. Stonestreet

In the early 2000s, across the digital and print world of Christian apologetics, the so-called “New Atheism” was a central topic of conversation.

Authors like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens generated quite an audience by attacking religion in general, and Christianity in particular, portraying both as irrational, evil forces in society.

Books like The God Delusion,God Is Not Great, and The End of Faith argued that belief in God was unscientific, and that unbelief would make us all better people.

You may be thinking to yourself, “I haven’t really thought of those guys in quite a while.” Exactly.

• Political Christmas by M. Tooley

Political Christmas by M. Tooley

There is a lot in this essay I agree with, but I am not necessarily opposed to anyone who wants to address inequality or unfairness in a society per se.

I do get a little tired of Progressive Christians who try to leverage Jesus and his birth circumstances into talking points to support their views on immigration and socialism, though, and it seems ten times more gaudy to do so in the weeks leading up to Christmas, as they usually do.

Political Christmas by Mark Tooley

Snippets:

Lots of commentary claims Christmas is profoundly political.

A blog from a retired United Methodist bishop offered the usual talking points:

Politics is about power, its definition and use. Christmas is about God’s politics, God’s definition and exercise of power.

Here are the  images of God’s power:

a baby born among the homeless,
an immigrant child escaping violence,….
— end blog excerpt —