On Christmas Eve on my other blog—
what’s its name again?—I spoke about
men and women’s social expectations for them. My argument was that women had stopped expecting men to behave as
Menschen (which isn’t quite the same as
Übermann, but definitely a little more than your average Joe. When a German calls another man a
Mensch, you can almost hear him underline it and put an exclamation point after it: “What a
man!”). And because women no longer demanded special treatment by men, men stopped trying to be
Menschen and became dogs … except that such a comparison is unfair to the dog, who at least can be expected to show some fidelity.
Now in the magazine
First Things, poet and homeschooling mother Sally Thomas
takes a look at the problem from the other side of the fence. Her argument is a little more than simply saying, “Boys will be boys”. Rather, she goes on to argue, “It’s a mistake for parents to presume that a fascination with the idea of blowing something away is, in itself, a disgusting habit, like nose-picking, that can and should be eradicated. The problem is not that the boy’s hand itches for a sword. The problem lies in not telling him what they are for, that they are
for something—the sword and the itch alike. … Heaven forbid, we always say, that our boys should have to go to war. Still, what even a symbolic knighthood accomplishes is the recognition that a boy’s natural drive to stab and shoot and smash can be shaped, in his imagination, to the image of sacrifice, of laying down his life for his friends.”
