Backlash! Part Deux:Your husband doesn’t have to earn your respect

Your husband doesn’t have to earn your respect - This is a blog post by Matt Walsh, which you should read before you read this, as I'm going to just jump right in.  All in all, I don't think I disagree with Walsh, just that we're coming at this thing from two different perspectives, with two different agendas.  He sees a chicken, and I see and egg, and it's anyone's guess how either one got there in the first place...let me explain:

The "all men are fat, witless, oafs sitcoms" are often panned by feminists, because these same sitcoms tend to:
a) Show an unattractive man with a smoking hot wife (demonstrating the gulf between the requirements for physical attractiveness between men and women), and
b) Perpetuate outdated gender roles, because now not only is the wife responsible for taking care of the children and the house, she is now also expected to take care of her husband, who does nothing but bring home money (and occasionally do some yard-work).
So she's not an alpha-bride, but an overworked subservient bride who has minimal control over her own life and exercises it.  The media's (and, chicken/egg-ly, general culture's) shift toward portraying men as children that must be cared for is just another part of the ongoing backlash against feminism.  For all it seems like this attitude is elevating women, it's really just as degrading to the women as it is to the men - it's hardly different from the Victorian notion of the "Angel in the Household."
(Also, there are an increasing number of people arguing that childhood is a social construction designed to keep women from attaining equal status, because the care of our youth is Just Too Important.  I'm really skeptical of this one, since how you raise your kids is important, but then again, I also recognize that in other times and cultures, children are/have been given more responsibility [including jobs of their own], left to their own devices, raised by professional strangers, etc, and generally grown up to be normal, reasonable adults - and then again, today's kids have seen a 20 pt increase in IQ in just the past few years, probably due to the way we're paying more attention to them.  BUT ANYWAY...)


Back to the point:
1) Gender inequality is harmful to both genders, no matter how it manifests.

2) Now you know how we feel.  On the one hand, I'm tempted toward the "Cry me an f*in' river" response, because I understand that the loss of status that men are feeling is just a natural result of things evening out. So the loss of status doesn't mean you're below us, it means you're starting to come down to our level, as we start to rise up to yours.  Things are evening out. On the other hand, "Don't be a dick" is my new life motto, so I instead recognize that yes, men have had a loss in status.  It's not a false perception, but it is a necessary part of the movement toward equality.

3) The idea that the main problem with this portrayal is that women will grow up not knowing how to submit is pretty...grr.  I think the problem is more that women grow up and, because they think this is how the world functions, they are prepared to put up with a lot more bullshit than they should be.  They get stressed and burnt out, because the media has duped men into behaving like ape children, and they have been duped into thinking that ape children are ok to marry.  If we want wives to submit, they need to also know how to find men who are worth submitting to.  Once you're married, you're stuck.  a lot of the things you thought were ok, or thought you could handle, start to wear on you more after 5 to 10 years and a couple of kids.  This is why feminists have a problem with the term "having it all."  Women are supposed to be able to "have it all" - a job, kids, a happy marriage, a nice home - but no one talks about men "having it all" in the same way.  Yes, men do want all those things, but they aren't expected to be ultimately in charge of them as much as women are.  Child-rearing is still considered primarily the wife's job, regardless of whether she has another job or is particularly good with children or not.  Add these sitcom-style man-children into the mix and OF COURSE we're going to start showing the strain.
We need to teach men how to be worthy of being submitted to (he does cover this some).  Women don't WANT to be obnoxious mothers to their husbands (it sucks), but when you're stuck in a crappy situation, you do what you can to compensate.  This is bad (and mirrors, in many ways, the men-turning-to-porn problem he talks about - chickens and eggs and chickens and eggs and chickens and eggs).  Obviously, a husband won't ALWAYS live up to that ideal, and a wife won't ALWAYS be able to submit, because we're sinful.  In the end, however, this is an arrangement that only works if both parties recognize the inherent equality between spouses, have the appropriate attitude toward headship, and work REALLY hard to know and respect their partners.  (Side note: I think we should all switch to the term, "partners," rather than husband and wife.  It's just nice.)

4) (Slightly off-topic) NO ONE should have to "earn" respect.  Respect is every person's right as a human being, until it is lost.  One might lose respect and earn it back, but in keeping with my life motto of: "Don't be a dick," I'd like to argue that initially, until they prove otherwise, people should have your respect.

5) I like - no, LOVE - his argument that love is a duty.  It is, and I don't give a crap if that doesn't fit into your romantic "ideals."  I covered this some in a couple other posts, but to reiterate: God asks us to do a lot of things.  Some people think that he asks us these things because that is our natural function (women are all naturally submissive, people are all naturally hetero, etc.).  I find that the things people argue as "natural" seem to be things they don't struggle with (God asks us to work hard even if our boss sucks, but nobody claims that hard work is the "natural" state - everyone knows that it stinks).  But you know what?  The only thing that is "natural" to us is sin.  Instead of "natural," they ought to say "ideal," but then they would have to admit that some people don't fit into this mold and struggle really hard with these things.  Our God is a God of order, and he gave us duties to help sustain the order of the world.  Sometimes those duties are hard, but that doesn't excuse us from them.  In the same vain, people tend to assume that love is something that just happens.  It's "natural."  You fall in love, and you figure you'll be in love forever, but then if it starts to fade, well, it just wasn't meant to be.  Love isn't natural - not anymore, anyway.  We may fall into it, but that doesn't mean it'll be that easy forever.  Love can be made, and it needs work.  It is a duty.

6) (Again off-topic) All men have watched porn.  People are sinful and they make mistakes.  I've seen too many relationships broken up because a girlfriend freaked out over a single instance of porn-watching. I think that secrecy is far more damaging than whatever the secret is one is keeping, and I also think that if men think their girlfriends are going to leave them, they don't stop, they just get cagey about it, which leads to more trouble.  We should try to be understanding of people's weaknesses.  That's not to say that porn is totally fine and nothing at all to worry about, because that's not true.  I merely argue that it shouldn't be an instant-dump offense. Ladies, forgive and move on, and men, knock it off, it's bad.

7) "Society does not permit men to be vocal about their need for respect."  BULLSHIT.  That is all.

I started this as a response to someone posting this article on Facebook, but it got way too long and unwieldy so, again, I'm taking this and turning it into a blog post.  A fair amount of my posts sprang from arguments on the internet.  I like to argue.  I like to have my beliefs challenged (even when I don't like it - yeah, that's right) because it helps me deepen my understanding of an issue and even if I don't change my mind, I now have more reasons why I'm right, which is always good, too.

Now I'm going to take a break and watch tv.