Men Need (Contemporary) Women Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle
March 6, 2007 · By Tom Cerber
It’s common for people to claim women civilize men. Anthony Esolen shrewdly points out that they do a very good job at domesticating men, but men don’t need women to civilize them, if we pay attention to the difference between those 2 terms:
Women do not in fact civilize men; they domesticate men, as I’ve said before. Men civilize men. There’s a difference.
What is that difference? A soldier in a cavalry unit who spends most of his time in barracks or under the skies,may well be more civilized, more trained to think of and to act for the common good, to command other men or to obey, than many a high-priced lawyer or even college professor. He’s not domesticated, though, and his new bride at first might find him pretty hard to live with. On the other hand, men who live comfortable lives apart from other men, taking no initiative for the common good, considering only their wives and children and not the welfare of anybody else’s children, never to be relied upon in time of public need, may be domesticated but not civilized. You might find plenty of men of the former sort at the inception of a great nation. You will find plenty of men of the latter sort at its decline.
Meanwhile, the NY Times reports on the barbarism of university-age women.
So then are gay men more civilized than straight men?
Anonymous: I don’t know. But you might find this by Esolen interesting.
I have read his stuff before, and find it to be pretty uninteresting, actually. Thanks for the link, though.