CNN Columnist: Violence Is On The Rise Because Of The Patriarchy. Here's Why That's Idiotic.
Community organizer Richard Edmond Vargas has finally cracked the code to violence in American society over at the CNN website: it’s not guns after all. No, it’s testicles.
According to Vargas, “it's safe to say there is something wrong with how our culture socializes men.” Yes, Vargas has spent lots of time with prisoners. And what he’s found is that the patriarchy is to blame:
Patriarchy is a social system that defines men as being inherently violent, dominant and controlling while rewarding them with power for being that way. It is no secret, especially these days, that we live in a patriarchal society. Why are we continually surprised when a man takes up arms and commits mass murder?
Well, first off, the vast majority of men don’t. Violent crime rates have been in consistent decline for decades. Second, men constitute most violent criminals in every known society, no matter how feminist those societies. Third, it’s lack of men in homes that’s leading to crime in particular areas — single motherhood is one of the leading indicators of criminality among young men. And it’s rather weird that Vargas is willing to blame a culture of American patriarchalism at large for violence, rather than looking to the cultures that inhere in high-crime areas of all races — cultures that eschew education, eschew fatherhood, and promote chest-thumping masculinity.
Instead, Vargas blames “cartoons, video games and contemporary politicians.”
There is zero evidence that cartoons — which have grown progressively less violent over time — link with violence. There is zero evidence that video games lead to violence. And there’s no evidence that contemporary politicians are causing violence. But never mind that: it’s the propaganda that counts. Vargas says that our culture promotes the idea that violence “makes them real men.”
What evidence does he provide for this rather stunning contention? He cites his own case:
In my own life, I was taught by patriarchy that real men don't ask for help. And because of the ways that patriarchy is racialized I was taught that black men, like myself, were supposed to act in certain ways. Hardened. Shallow. Unaccountable. When I was 19, I followed this script and decided that committing robberies was an acceptable way to deal with the fact that I couldn't pay my rent. Though my girlfriend offered to help me pay it, I saw accepting a woman's help as weakness and decided to rob instead. That led to me being sentenced to 10 years in state prison.
This is all rather vague. Who was the patriarchy here? Was it the pastors at his church? His father? His brothers? Or just some weird ghost in the machine of society? We don’t know. He just spits out the word, and we’re all supposed to shout “#MeToo!” Vargas argues correctly that “As long as men get labeled ‘p*****s’ for choosing not to fight, male emotion is sneered upon as weakness and masculinity itself is measured by the willingness to be violent.” But that’s not what most men are teaching their children. That’s what’s being taught in gangs, by teenagers to even younger kids. But to blame the patriarchy at large when it’s lack of decent men in society leading to a dearth of decency is simply ridiculous.
Vargas’ solution: feelings. He says that young men must be taught to “share and regulate the spectrum of human emotions.” Or, alternatively, we could have more of a patriarchy — a system in which men brought up their boys to be men, rather than thugs. That would include emotional self-regulation, which was always seen as a hallmark of being a man — not burying feelings, but controlling them.
But it’s easier to make the pages of CNN by blaming Donald Trump for violence than lack of good fathering.
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