Women & Men in Society

When a young married woman discovers the Latin Mass, sees the errors in her feminist tendencies, and feels a calling to return to a more traditional and feminine way of life, her path is clear. She learns about the importance of dressing with modesty and speaking with dignity and propriety, which guides the motherly vocation she is called to fulfill.

This new pathway leads her to learn how to be a homemaker and take on beautiful hobbies such as knitting, painting and singing. These customs, once firmly embarked upon, prepare her to be a more capable and delightful mother and wife, and naturally guide her to give up a worldly career for one at home raising the children and helping her husband.

Turning to the young husband, however, things are more problematic: When he discovers tradition, his path is not as clear. He finds few reasons when amongst his friends to start dressing with dignity, so he continues to wear t-shirts and jeans. He begins looking at Catholic content online and discovers accounts that use slang and even profanity, which gives him little motivation to change his speech.

Since many of these men also promote working out as the most important endeavor a “traditional man” can take up, he spends a great deal of his time and energy in the gym, which leaves little time for developing more dignified hobbies that would have a good influence on his family. Having made no effort to alter his bearing, comportment and habits, he is left ill-prepared to culturally lead his children.

The young wife finds herself constantly in the situation of having to replace the man of the house: It is she who has to choose the restaurant for the family, where to go for vacations, how to decorate the home, what traditions to establish in the home, what activities the children should have, and anything else concerning the familial, religious and cultural formation.

Rather than submit to the orientation of a secure husband who leads the formation of the family, she finds herself forced to replace him because he is too busy lifting weights, watching sports, scrolling on Instagram or, even worse, playing video games.

Any attempt to promote good bearing, clothing and civil speech in her children is thwarted by his example of tennis shoes, blue jeans and dumb jokes that clash with her teachings. This double orientation confuses their children.

Eventually, her old feminist tendencies she wanted so much to root out creep back in, not from her own desire but out of necessity, since she has to lead the family. She begins to unconsciously give orders to her husband and expects him to obey just like he were one of her children. Since he is a superficial man with no plan to culturally form his family, he submits to what she wants.

Having no one to guide her, she becomes exhausted and begins to resent her husband. This clash in authority leaves a lasting effect on the children and breaks the family dynamic in half.

Two victim types of the Cultural Revolution

The reason men have to struggle more than women in this return to tradition is because the Cultural Revolution worked differently on men and on women.

Women were encouraged to study hard subjects, play sports and enter careers that went against their natural femininity and made them more masculine.

I will not address here the feminization of men, which is a different topic, and unfortunately very frequent. I will deal only with those men who did not become effeminate.

They remained somewhat masculine but were encouraged to focus their energy on vain pursuits and to disregard serious formation and study. Instead of learning about the crisis in the Church and in the world and how to avoid these crises that harm the family, they were induced to watching sports, trying to get rich and engaging in a plethora of material and vain pursuits following false dreams.

These activities, no matter how misguided they are, still make men feel masculine and this is why they are less likely to have the same sort of identity crisis that women have upon returning to tradition. They do not feel a need to lead the culture of the family in the social sphere because they do not feel a crisis in their identity as women do. Since many of these vain pursuits strip men of their higher-level thinking and will-power, it is not hard to understand how many are simply unable to lead their families, even if they want to.

We can see historically that this lack of action by the men is what caused the women to change so drastically. When men stopped focusing on their duty to their family, the women had no one to guide them. With this, they ended up finding Feminism and gradually became more radical over time. Had these women had manly fathers and brothers in their homes to protect them from these revolutionary trends they could have reacted differently to the Feminist Revolution, but unfortunately many were led astray. Bad women are almost always a result of bad men.

One desire that these traditionally minded men have but can never seem to fully achieve is to have an obedient wife. They expect their wives to obey them. However, when the man does not care about the small things inside his family and home, his wife is naturally going to take over and the clashes will begin in small and subtle ways, perhaps it will remain for the entire marriage.

For example, if a man does not care about the furniture in his home and does not plan outings for the family, his wife is going to have to decide these things and direct the entire family, including him. When he eventually decides something and tries to impose this on her expecting obedience, he may be shocked to find her instinctively resisting him because of his previous omissions.

Men need to take charge again on every aspect of the family life. They need to see the seriousness of how their family dresses, acts and speaks. Fathers should be leading the religious and cultural formation inside their homes so that their wives and children become entirely Catholic and able to face life in any circumstance. If men do not understand that they are the cornerstones of families and that families are the building blocks of society, they will continue to be led by their wives and even their own children.

To be continued

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