Feminism would work if we didn’t have weak men screwing everything up.

Beta orbiting blogger James Russell Lingerfelt’s latest post is a republication of a post by Roger Sterling Jr titled 5 benefits of having a smart and successful wife.  Sterling was deeply troubled after reading a study which found that men took a self esteem hit when told their partner scored in the top 12% of university students:

If you needed any further proof that the current state of masculinity has decayed to a skinny jeans-wearing, over-emotional, self-esteem lacking embarrassment, there it is. There are few things more “beta male” in this world than taking an emotional hit when the person you supposedly care about most knocks it out of the park.

It isn’t clear to me whether Sterling is a feminist or a traditional conservative, but this is part of the point.  Since feminism is now the established order feminists are finding themselves the new conservatives, and many conservatives can be found unwittingly conserving feminism.

However they arrive at the new conservative position, the idea that feminism would work if it weren’t for weak men screwing everything up is extremely common.  This argument only makes sense if you take feminism as a given, as the new, natural, and permanent order.  Under this paradigm, men who aren’t living up to feminist women’s expectations are defective, and need to “grow a pair”.

The “grow a pair” argument is of course compelling because this is the masculine way to look at the world.  Advising men to grow a pair is excellent advice, but the question is why they should “man up”, and what form men’s self improvement should take.  Should men improve themselves to facilitate the delusional dreams of feminists, or should men improve themselves because excellence and overcoming adversity is inherent in being a man?   The reason men choose to “grow a pair” will instruct the form of said growth.  Growing a pair under the new feminist/conservative order means manning up and marrying a career woman to prove that you are strong enough to handle her, so much so that you are willing to overlook more attractive women to prove your strength in supporting feminism.