This weekened I watched Only the Brave, the true story of 19 hotshot wild fire fighters who lost their lives trying to save houses and lives threatened by wildfires.
And I thought about Backdraft, and The Perfect Storm, and Once We Were Soldiers and other films depicting heroism and it occurred to me, only men can do these jobs, and only men do them. Sure, they are dumbing down standards to allow women to be Marines and firemen, but doing so endangers the real Marines and the real firefighters, and linemen, and sewer workers, and garbagemen and policemen (yeah, they’ve dumbed down standards to allow for women cops too, who keep getting disarmed by criminals and couldn’t carry their partner to safety if they had to) who for generations have protected women and children. They couldn’t even have token women cops and firemen and soldiers if men weren’t there to do the real grunt work.
Think about this the next time women say they don’t need men, or men are obsolete, or talking about toxic masculinity. The 19 men who died in the Yarnell Hill Tragedy had the kind of masculinity that saves lives and gave them the strength and bravery to lay down their own for others. No woman could do what they do, or they would be doing it. As Camille Paglia once said, if it were up to women we’d all still be living in huts. Masculinity conquered great empires and harems of the great leaders peopled those empires.
Men have always been the first pioneers (women followed, no doubt, after the first wave of men) explorers, adventurers, from Africa to the Poles to the New World to space. The harridans who rail about toxic masculinity are served and protected by hard, masculine men whose bravery and masculinity allow them to risk their lives to do mundane tasks like work on an oil rig, string electric lines or even kill our enemies.
Thank God for masculinity. It’s done and doing a lot more good than bad in the world.