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ajmaese 's review for:
It's Good to Be a Man: A Handbook for Godly Masculinity
by Dominic Bnonn Tennant, Michael Foster
The content of this book is essentially the ‘red pill’ baptized. The authors adequately observe the problems and challenges facing men and the concept of masculinity in modern culture. Unfortunately, even as I favored most of the solutions to the problems, I often didn’t agree with how the authors arrived at them.
First point of disagreement: the authors hold that men are not born they are made. Women are. Males have to become men. This performative sense of masculinity is problematic in my opinion for many reasons that I won’t detail here. Second, the authors ground masculinity in creation order, and in Adam in particular. This is likewise problematic, even as it’s the common starting point for many. Much better to begin with the very image of God, Christ himself, as the ground of masculinity. The resources for this are there in the theology coming out of the reformation. Why Adam, or at least the mandate given to Adam, remains the starting point for evangelicals on masculinity escapes me.
One additional point: I’m of the opinion that persons are usually not won to one’s position through denigration. So, phrases like clueless and functional bastards, butch women, and gay men, while they get the point across, are really unnecessary. It’s understood. Fatherlessness in all its forms is a cancer in our society. Men are increasingly feminized, and women are taking on more masculine traits. Don’t get me wrong, a well placed jab has its place at times, but I thought the point was to redirect and build up people, and here men in particular, not tear them down, unless the point is to just preach to the malcontented troops. In any case, as previously stated, I agreed with the observations of the problems and most of the solutions (I’m traditionalist at heart), just not always how they were arrived at.
First point of disagreement: the authors hold that men are not born they are made. Women are. Males have to become men. This performative sense of masculinity is problematic in my opinion for many reasons that I won’t detail here. Second, the authors ground masculinity in creation order, and in Adam in particular. This is likewise problematic, even as it’s the common starting point for many. Much better to begin with the very image of God, Christ himself, as the ground of masculinity. The resources for this are there in the theology coming out of the reformation. Why Adam, or at least the mandate given to Adam, remains the starting point for evangelicals on masculinity escapes me.
One additional point: I’m of the opinion that persons are usually not won to one’s position through denigration. So, phrases like clueless and functional bastards, butch women, and gay men, while they get the point across, are really unnecessary. It’s understood. Fatherlessness in all its forms is a cancer in our society. Men are increasingly feminized, and women are taking on more masculine traits. Don’t get me wrong, a well placed jab has its place at times, but I thought the point was to redirect and build up people, and here men in particular, not tear them down, unless the point is to just preach to the malcontented troops. In any case, as previously stated, I agreed with the observations of the problems and most of the solutions (I’m traditionalist at heart), just not always how they were arrived at.