The Heroic Masculine and the Devouring Stepmother

My first encounter with feminism happened at the age of five. I was playing on what my father insisted on calling a “play apparatus”—in layman’s terms, a jungle gym—and Naomi, a blonde girl my age, was perched at the top. “I will save you,” I said, and began to climb. “I don’t need saving,” she said, followed by, “I do not want to play.” Brought up with classic tales of heroism, I was already detecting the severe disconnect between the age-that-was and the modern period within which I was encased. I had not the words, but I felt it in the way children do. Social dynamics shift as we age, it is true, but there is something eternally contemporaneous about our childhood experiences.

The second encounter I clearly remember was via my teacher, who was an otherwise wonderful woman, reading The Paper Bag Princess to the class. In this pivotal tome of the Occidental canon, the female princess must save the ungrateful prince, who carries a tennis racquet in lieu of a sword, and the ending has her predictably dancing alone into the sunset. The subversion of expectations, that our popular media seems to think is the height of clever story-telling, was already there in 1980, when this book was published. If you want to experience an updated version of the same story, go and see the new Peter Pan; even the Lost Boys are led by a strong female character. The future some had in mind was no country for young men.

This essay appears in October’s Quadrant.
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The heroic masculine, once the dominant ethos in Western civilisation, is now on life support. Yet, if you were to take one look at ABC News, you would assume we were living in a patriarchal tyranny that would make Sauron blush. Within every man is a rapist trying to get out; toxic masculinity is everywhere lurking; we talk about “consent” endlessly, as though people only do wrong thanks to a Socratic veil of ignorance (a surprisingly naive and optimistic view of the human condition, given the misanthropic Weltanschauung of the Left). Women are still held down by structural inequality, despite affirmative quotas in nearly every aspect of public life, and despite recently receiving the lion’s share of Order of Australia medals. News outlets repeatedly churn out juxtapositional gibberish: Women Now Earn More Than Men, Women’s Romantic Prospects Suffer Most. Are we supposed to laugh, or cry?

Cry, it seems; it is men who are committing suicide at grossly disproportionate rates, who are dropping out of school and university in droves, who appear to have collectively handed over the sceptre without even realising they’ve done so. They bury themselves in video games, or descend into the working man’s culture, the last outpost of masculinity, the masculinity of the mullet, the pub and NRL. Once the working man had Shakespeare and the Bible in his house; now he is addicted to pornography and marijuana. No, you will find no redemptive arc there. The departure of masculinity from any sort of aristocratic or high culture, from anything aspirational or upward-looking, should alarm those with a broad understanding of the course of civilisational history. The last time you saw that archetype, it was likely filling the boots of a badly-written villain in a badly-written television production.

Increasingly, the feminine-oriented zeitgeist we find ourselves immersed in begins to resemble the wicked stepmother of Brothers Grimm fame. Courtesy of the last century, we have a fairly clear understanding of what masculine evil resembles; the boot to the face of Orwell’s description, violent will-to-power, an unrestrained and generally poorly camouflaged desire for subjugation. At a more root-and-branch level, there is the moral panic about domestic violence that has dominated headlines for years. There is more that can be said about that, but it suffices for now that dividing the sexes into blameless angels and their opposite has not been particularly helpful, vis-à-vis the Higgins trial. I hope that, even in our age of slogan-driven muddy thinking, it is uncontroversial to note that neither gender holds a monopoly on sin or virtue. If there is one thing the modern person does not need, it is less accountability, nor on-demand unqualified victim status, even as they paradoxically claim to be the empowered arbiter of their own fate. All of us are obliged to resist the temptation to eat the cake we want to keep.

Feminine evil is a more slippery subject, because in the stunted state of the contemporary imagination, the heroic feminine is often realised along masculine lines. Forgive me for again descending a moment into the sewer that is popular culture to explore this point. Attend any Hollywood release that purports to showcase that “strong female character” and expect to see a rendering of the 1990s action hero in drag. Rules of physics be damned, these kung-fu queens could hold their own against Andre the Giant, if the plot so requires. And, unlike even the most poorly written Van Damme clone, that’s about it, in terms of character development. They are always equipped for any task, are entirely self-reliant, and most certainly do not need a man. That would be treason against the sisterhood. That these films bleed revenue, that people no longer show up to see them, and that they will turn your brain to jelly, seems not to rate; the messaging matters more than the money. This is important to keep in mind, that the other side perhaps does not view success or failure in the conventional way. They view commercial film-making the way the Soviets viewed Pravda. If things continue this way we might have to call them not-for-profit organisations, though I doubt that will dull their enthusiasm. (For the Critical Drinker’s thoughts on Hollywood’s modern legion of ‘strong women’ see the clip embedded at the foot of this essay. Warning: salty language)

None of this, I hope you will see, is a criticism of women. There are some especial women who can hold their place with any man, in the parts of life men have always managed best, when they are able to manage their best. My own life, and likely yours, is resplendent with female mentors, many of whom have been pillars of strength at various times; nobody who has experienced life as anything other than a reductionist, feebly politicised abstraction could quibble the point. These women, mind, always exist within what Jung called feminine archetypes. They are not men in different skins, and that is always apparent. What ennobles them is not an aversion to the traditional feminine but an embrace of it, even if they themselves are not cognisant of the fact, and might recoil if told as much, depending how much Kool-Aid they’ve had to drink. This is real feminine steel, and has nothing in common with Brienne of Tarth, Captain Marvel or Rey Skywalker—the sort of female action-heroes held up to girls today as models of aspiration, the way Schwarzenegger and Stallone served a prior generation of boys.

Part of this story-telling rings false because young women don’t need to be the prince, because they are the prize, and prizes don’t have to do much. Women choose suitors; men compose their ranks. This is why the female has value, despite what she does, and why women used to be evacuated first. The man who does nothing valuable has no value, and this is why the transition from boyhood to manhood is so jarring, especially in a society that has no ritual for such a thing deeper than going to the pub or a boozy eighteenth. In a strange inversion of those Germanic tribes who declared a man still a boy until he killed an enemy in battle, adolescence too often never ends for the postmodern man. And the postmodern woman, who breaks herself at the wheel for career and social prestige, belatedly discovers that nobody cares very much. It goes without saying that doing valuable things remains valuable, whatever your sex; but doing valuable things merely to be viewed as valuable is perhaps less laudable. Somebody made a category error, and assumed that what is good for one ought be just as good for the other; and all these problems are helped in no small part by the long-going attempt, that I hope needs no refuting, to convince us that differences between men and women are entirely invented.

What is delivered to us in these nicely marketed packages is not feminine strength—at least, not the way we see it play out in observable reality—which is why they fail on the silver screen. Feminine strength at its best is selfless, all-sacrificing, and lights the fire that warms the hearth. A world without it is a cold and bitter one. The natural feminine instinct, properly deployed, is chthonic, nurturing and building what is immediate to her. If you have a good mother, you know exactly what I mean. If you are a good wife, who has avoided the ideational traps of the moment, you know that this is not an easy thing; that it will make demands over and above what men will often understand. It requires courage and grace. All of this bends against the fervent modern desire to always be the protagonist, but among either sex, who of us really are? Even if we consider ourselves so, who would be interested in reading the story? Naked individualism can only take, and at least Ayn Rand was honest about that; and female strength is largely about the opposite. In this expression of feminine strength is great power, and great responsibility; the hand that rocks the cradle still rules the world.

Feminine evil, it seems to me, constitutes a propensity towards infantilising forever on the one hand, and neglect on the other. The most immediate feminine duty, and today the most neglected, is to the next generation: we might as well be honest about it. I didn’t make the rules, but I can at least be truthful in reporting them accurately, and not mistake wishful thinking for how the world really is. Why this prompts such foaming rage in the feminist probably requires more examination than scope exists here, but likely it relates to the desperate hubris of the modern to remake the world exactly according to his or her whims. As Chesterton said, the modern woman wishes to be a slave in the workplace rather than a queen in the home, though making this argument today comes the better part of a century too late, when all our economic and social conditions have shifted to make any other sort of life an impossibility for most. One must also concede that the various feminist moments played ultimately to the benefit of communists, capitalists and carnalists, who happened to provide them with the most corporeal support.

The sexual revolution has been likened to encouraging children to play in traffic. The results have been ruined families, childlessness and demographic decline, as well as all kinds of individualised distress that should make public renunciations of Freud mandatory. Until we can grow embryos en masse in machines, Third World migration will have to suffice; the very sorts least likely to embrace feminism, at least initially, when they are most fecund. One day, we might learn that we cannot depend on technology and globalisation to fix the catastrophes they helped create. In the meantime, it is evident that the various waves of feminism have essentially euthanised the conditions that enabled it to emerge in the first place. Thus, we are left with the Devouring Stepmother, because her efforts are entirely destructive, and because this state of affairs is not a natural one. The heroic masculine can never be the progeny of what passes for today’s zeitgeist.

To the ruling dispensation, the heroic masculine is not merely regarded as an antiquarian throwback, a thing we’ve harmlessly moved past, or something that had its time and ought to peacefully evolve into the next stage of evolution. Given how linearly and depressingly this dispensation imagines the nature of progress, we ought to expect this is how they will express it, in terms they suppose the majority will believe. Rather, they correctly identify the heroic masculine as a threat, perhaps the most vital threat, to the continued health of their colossal project of social engineering. This is why many commentators, some in elected positions, declare “young white men” the number one threat to the current order; not that this is to pretend that some versions of the ersatz masculinity proffered today are anything heroic. Nonetheless, as I read somewhere, if the Chinese government said the same about Han Chinese males, you’d wonder who’d conquered them.

The proof is in the pudding. No organisations are more subject to the relentless encroach of diversity initiatives than the military and the emergency services—in particular, the army, the police, and the various fire and rescue services. Watch a recruitment advertisement for Defence, then compare it to one coming out of, say, Russia or China. One aims to harness the heroic masculine, while the other seems to think it is selling a wellness product. Organisations of this sort function on the premise of the männerbund, and anybody who wants to argue about gender inclusion, unfair fitness requirements, and “doing better” has utterly missed the point, or is deliberately behaving disingenuously. That this ought to be spelled out says a great deal about how far we’ve drifted from what was once accepted as natural. There is a sense of desperation in all the efforts to neuter the modern man; if you have a teenage son in school, ask him what he’s been learning in class.

The heroic masculine is dangerous because, at its best, it is not seduced by promises of a comfortable life. We might channel some of this remnant energy into gym memberships, sporting groups, or hope to see it sterilised through the drudgery of office life, but at day’s end, it is about thumos and looking upward. The mind and body properly united behind this ideal emerge impervious to all the various slings and arrows hurled by the frothing lunatics who would rather see the unnatural win out. Unfortunately, this is not an automatic process, and requires careful philosophical nurturing; as akin to cultivating a garden or building a library as lifting weights. What we hear today called “toxic masculinity” is the extreme elements of this attitude lacking any sort of epistemic rigour, exaggerated to cartoonish levels in response to a civil square starved of genuine masculine substance, and proffered at the expense of the deeper, more difficult parts. This is also because taking shortcuts is fundamental to the modern mindset, and in the hall of mirrors our world has become, the fabricated appearance of a thing is often more desirable than the thing itself. Generally, all this “manosphere” stuff is done to get a rise out of the other side; and generally, it is successful in achieving this. But getting a rise out of the other side is low-hanging fruit, and accomplishes little in the scheme of things, even if, as Voltaire reminds us, it is always entertaining when our enemies are made to look ridiculous. Alexander the Great slept with the Iliad under his pillow. Do not sleep with Andrew Tate curled under yours.

The fundamental virtue of the heroic masculine is courage, a virtue that we have all but extirpated today. What passes for public courage now is crying on camera, or theatrically baring one’s soul to strangers, or making heartfelt apologies about things one probably hasn’t entirely renounced. This overbearing, humbuggish and sentimental deformation of proper moral courage is best encapsulated in who we declare to be our national heroes. Have a look at recent Australians of the Year. We should be further careful not to confuse physical courage for the moral sort. Professional sport, once that outpost of heroic if exhibitionist masculinity, is now subject to various humiliation rituals to remind us all who butters the bread. What else is the purpose of the “pride round”? From unformed young men in their twenties, who wish to enjoy the fruits of their sudden celebrity despite becoming sudden role-models to millions, it is difficult to expect resistance; and they make the best ambassadors for undermining the heroic masculine, if it can be done. They are a valuable trophy for the other side. Most of them, like most of us generally, tack sails to the wind. After all, who wants to be the next Israel Folau? Not that we ought to disregard caution entirely for courage; nobody is helped by your leaping into an active volcano.

Antidotes to the death of heroism are best found in old books, and if you want to radicalise against our present radicalisation, they are the best place to start. Has modern wordsmithery come close to stirring the breast, compared to what preceded it? From Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome:

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods.

Courage in the face of fearful odds strikes terror into the heart of the Devouring Stepmother, of the medusa who expects you to turn to stone at a single glance. And, like Perseus, holding up a mirror-shield that demonstrates the true nature of a thing is a sound strategy. To channel St Augustine, the truth needs defending less than it needs releasing. The existentialists said we could be anybody we wanted, as individuals; the constructivists declared we could make society any way we liked. Both are built on a fundamental deceit about the nature of reality, and perhaps neither school quite meant what they said. I think of Dr Johnson’s appeal to the stone frequently. Unfortunately, the fruits of modernity brought about such hubris it was inevitable somebody would get carried away. This is why we have men wandering around in dresses demanding to be taken seriously, why we seem fine with pumping children full of hormones, and why we are close to making criticism of both illegal. All this began with a rebellion against the biological nature of reality, one encapsulated by the various waves of feminism; a rebellion that every one of us is doomed to lose, eventually.

This anti-naturalism makes feminism as much anti-woman as it is anti-man, and can only express social goods in the langue de bois of liberal rights, and measure them in salaries, university-graduation statistics and economic utility. Always, it is accompanied by a great deal of wailing, and of further exhortations against glass ceilings, patriarchies, or whatever catchphrase is in vogue. Part of the reason men’s rights groups gain no traction is that they attempt to utilise these tools, unaware that using them thrusts their own message into the uncanny valley. The idea of begging for table scraps, of giving away one’s dignity in return for political largesse, breeds contempt in everybody who views it; especially in women, who need the heroic masculine as much as men need the heroic feminine. Simply put, it is not deserving of a self-respecting man.

Perhaps the most abiding consequence of the rise of the Devouring Stepmother and the decline of the heroic masculine is the deep unhappiness that has penetrated into the marrow of contemporary life. You will rarely meet a happy feminist, thanks to that war against their own nature. Most modern men are fighting a similar battle, but in the worst possible way. Theirs has been followed by subjugation and capitulation, a war they surrendered, in many cases, right at the very beginning, and often without noticing. They are the alcoholic Russian men drinking vodka in the streets in the wake of the Bolsheviks, because all the secure points of life that once existed were swept away following conquest. Feminism has managed to rob both men and women of the conditions that make life most liveable, to deprive both sexes of even the schema to think outside an unnatural order that we have come to take as natural, and most of all, to convince each they no longer need the other. The war was never between the sexes, but rather a wrestling match between the better and worse parts of our own natures. Indolent man-children make no better husbands than eternally indignant women make wives, and it seems for a great many the need for either has been dispensed with. It is designed to bring the worst out of both sexes, and in that, it appears to have succeeded.

Christopher Jolliffe is a frequent contributor. He wrote “A Hard Night’s Day”, on the new libertinism and its consequences, in the September issue.