By: Krista Lang
It’s a Friday night, and you’re at a frat party. There’s drinking, dancing, short skirts, and Megan Thee Stallion blaring through the speakers. You’re surrounded by ravenous guys, their eyes scanning the room for their next potential hook-up. In between the drunken nights out and the meaningless flings, you begin to feel empty, but why? After all, isn’t this what everyone does? Such promiscuity is shamelessly embedded into our culture, but the effects are quite damaging. How did we get here? What about our culture has influenced this abhorrent behavior?
In this day and age, some women seem to vie for the attention of men by disregarding their self-worth and modesty, while placing their inherent emotions aside for a night of “fun.” We seem to forget that the emotional capacity of women is what makes us incredible caregivers and the ultimate nurturers of society. Not to mention, hookup culture creates emotional and psychological injury. Especially during college, women tend to put all of this aside in order to blend in with the new societal norm – promiscuity. At the same rate, men have also lost sight of traditional masculine roles.
Have you ever looked around our campus and realized how many men have devolved into less masculine and less altruistic people? What happened to men who commit, provide, and protect? Over time, men who hold honorable and loyal values have become quite scarce. A cultural shift has caused them to disregard traditional masculine values. There has been a clear decline in values such as providing for their family, protecting those weaker than them, strength, assertiveness, and dominant leadership.Toxic masculinity includes the traits of masculinity that cause men to harm to themselves and society, such as suppressing emotions or using violence as an indication of power. However, the left consistently tells men that all masculinity is toxic, so they tend to deal with this information in two different ways. Some yield to femininity and ultraliberalism, which is not in their biological nature and usually takes the form of adapting feminine characteristics in a subconscious attempt to gain approval from society, since masculine characteristics are all lumped together as toxic. However, other men reject traditional masculine roles with hookups and hypersexual behavior, essentially reinforcing the negative stereotypes of men that many women believe in.
The left’s undeniable stronghold over American cultural institutions has left an emotional scar on men in its wake. Ironically, the left claims to be all-inclusive and accepting, but the pressure they have inflicted seems to have made half of the population feel absolutely worthless for being who they are. We’ve seen many proponents of leftism shout: “all men are bad” and “kill all men”. It is a simple human tendency to subconsciously live up to others’ expectations of us. How can we be surprised when men live up to the bad name they have been given?
The manner in which we have observed many men conducting themselves is that of a simple disregard for female value. Chivalry truly is dead in this modern age. Tinder hookups and sending lewd pictures has taken the place of love letters and waiting until marriage. However, these things go against the human biological desire – to find stability, settle down, and start a family.
Men have deviated from traditional values and instead behave in a hyper-sexual manner because this is now what is expected of them. Women reward this behavior by engaging in sexual activity with these men instead of outright rejecting this behavior. This is positive reinforcement – adding a stimulus to increase a behavior. If women continue to participate in hook-up culture, then men will continuously lose interest in committed relationships. Why would a man feel the need to settle down with one woman when he sees that there is an intriguing world of sexual promiscuity to explore?
It is important to emphasize that this is not the fault of neither men nor women. These occurrences fuel a symbiotic relationship in which both parties are rewarded by the actions of the other. We know that men are inherently more sexual beings. If we do not generate a culture that encourages morality among both men and women, they will succumb to their adverse tendencies.
However, the men who don’t cave to the hyper-sexualized culture seem to completely disown their masculinity for the satisfaction of the woke left. After all, if “all men are bad,” that must mean that feminine characteristics are more worthy of praise. This subconscious thought process has caused a dwindling in overall masculinity. Today, the amount of men who have adapted feminine characteristics is certainly much higher than the amount from previous generations. Such freedom of expression is never an issue, but it is important to acknowledge the drastic shift in the percentage of men who choose to present themselves in a more feminine manner because it is indicative of a cultural shift. In fact, a recent study found that less than one third of men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine reported feeling “completely masculine.” On the contrary, sixty-five percent of Generation X men reported feeling “completely masculine.” There is a very evident decline in masculinity as the liberalization of our culture continues.
The idea of “toxic masculinity” is often referenced when the left degrades the character of any man whom they deem unfit to represent their progressive ideology. While some specific behaviors men carry out may be toxic, we must not subject the idea of masculinity to toxicity as a whole.
We seem to forget that women are evolutionarily wired to look for men who are strong protectors and providers. This is an element of humanity that has not only helped the human race to survive, but to drastically progress. Men are wired to look for women who are nurturing and motherly. Culture is something that is always changing, and our most recent cultural changes seem to reflect progressive ideas of instant gratification rather than prolonged fulfillment. You may get an instant rush of dopamine or serotonin at that frat party where you drink too much and engage in meaningless sexual activity, but you will likely feel desolate and regretful later on. This is because men and women alike have a need to be loved and to have a sense of stability. We must make the decision to reject the allure of instant satisfaction. The need for family bonds does not change, despite the fact that culture does. As much as a subgroup of our culture may try to dismantle the true biological purpose of men and women – to commit and start a family – they can never erase the truth. Biology will always prevail.