A roundup of news and commentary from around the interwebs.
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Aaron Renn has a good essay on why so many men are turning to toxic online influencers: “Treat Men Like They Matter.” An excerpt:
Young men today often feel as if their needs are secondary to those of their female peers. Society tends to speak about the well-being of men and boys as a means to an end. There’s a lot of hand-wringing about how a decline in the number of marriageable men makes it harder for women to find husbands. Some argue that male struggles cause a litany of social ills like crime and child neglect. Church leaders justify outreach to men as a way to reach women and children.
By contrast, online men’s influencers seek to help men themselves, to show them how to improve as people and achieve their own goals. To be sure, some of those goals are immoral, such as taking sexual advantage of women. But many are worthy, like health or career success. Online influencers treat men’s hopes and dreams as important in their own right.
The latest newsletter from Samuel D. James (I have a review of his book Digital Liturgies coming up at The European Conservative) is a must-read: “Letters to a Deconstructing Christian: You Are Not Your Impulses.” It is a letter to one of the many, many Christians who have been “deconstructing” and abandoning their faith in order to live their “true selves”—which generally seems to mean that they wish to pursue lifestyles forbidden by Christianity. An excerpt:
Cringe neologisms aside, your point is clear: you wanted to have sex, early and often, and this desire’s violent collision with your religious upbringing wrecked you psychologically. But there’s something missing in your tale. You mention briefly toward the conclusion that you are now free of a life of shame, but you don’t actually tell the reader how ridding yourself of it made you a better person. You say that you are learning to love yourself again, but you don’t really say you are more lovable.
This seems significant to me. It’s almost as if the crisis in your life that brought you to a loss of faith was the guilt you felt from your sexual habits, and on the other side of that loss, you now no longer feel that guilt. But—and I hope you’ll forgive very direct speaking here—how many girlfriends ago was that loss of guilt? How many pornographic actresses have danced on your screen since you relieved yourself of that tension? How many people feel more genuinely cared for by you? You mention that you are learning to love yourself. Have you learned to love anyone else?
