At first, the article looked fairly promising. The APA actually started out by recognizing some very real and unique issues afflicting American men. But sadly, it went downhill from there. The 'authorities' basically agreed that "traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful." They claim that masculine values "marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression is, on the whole, harmful."
These opinions, of course, are not based upon any actual solid scientific findings. The rest of the article is rife with pseudoscience and ahistorical mythologies. Examples are: "Prior to 1960's 2nd-Wave Feminism, all psychology was the psychology of men;" "Old psychologies left out people of color and women and conformed to gender-role stereotypes;" "Gender is no longer just this male-female binary;" and most absurd of all was a long paragraph on what they call 'John Henryism' which is a completely racist portrayal of Black men disguised as cultural sensitivity.
This article brings up an issue that I first began to encounter a few months ago when writing about a new crackpot theory from the Academic Left which claimed that the whole concept of 'mind' is an illusion. That article was a difficult one to write. Then, last month, an article appeared in The Medium telling us about a concerning issue among the Left: that robots lack diversity and need Affirmative Action. Try as I might, I couldn't produce an article on that subject. The APA's new position paper presents the same conundrum.
It's not that the points raised in these kinds of articles are self-evident and irrefutable. The problem with writing about them is that their subject matter is so logically absurd that it's difficult to formulate an intelligent argument against ideas that are as plain stupid as these. How does someone, for example, formulate a philosophy---even an erroneous one---that the mind is illusion without using the mind to arrive at such a conclusion? The very idea that the mind doesn't exist is self-refuting.
How does one explain to these people that machinery has no intrinsic has no connection to culture; and to talk about multiculturalism among androids is ridiculous. Likewise with this APA paper. One of Freud's greatest contributions in elevating Psychology to a science was his demonstrations that this so-called "male-female binary" is a major motive force in human social evolution. IOW, taking 'traditional gender roles' out of Psychology is like taking Cellular Biology out of Medicine. All that is left of Psychology is a highly subjective analysis of human emotions and feelings with no actual therapeutic or socially-redeeming value.
And that's the basis of the problem. All that needed to be said about three high-brow Leftist social theories was just said in the preceding two paragraphs. It's not like debating over the merits of the proposed Border Wall or Trump's Budget or Tax proposals. In the APA paper, there's nothing to debate. Outside of their initial definition of the problem, their premises are factually false and their conclusions unrealistic and unworkable. If the authors of that paper actually believe any of what they wrote, they should be in a mental hospital themselves. And if they don't really believe it, they shouldn't be holding any high positions of public trust anyway.
The important thing to take away from all of this is that people who think like these guys will be running things if the Whacko Left Wing ever gets into power. For now, they can sit in their sinecures and spout off about things they don't understand---and that's bad enough---but having such nutcases making public policy will be a disaster. We need to stay the course, drain the swamp, and support the direction President Trump is leading us.
I have also been wanting to refute these findings and that article, but try as I might, it's just too absurd to tackle.
ReplyDeleteI guess I can humorously declare, masculinity as "marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression is, on the whole," really darn handy to have with you in a crisis, when you're under attack, when you're in need of protection and advice, and when you're trying to care for small children. It's also pretty closely entwined to sexual attraction and desirability.
Anything can become a negative or an extreme I suppose, and so "stoicism" probably contributes to men's higher suicide rates and unwillingness to ask for or to recognize their need for help. The cure however, is not to heap on shame and label men "toxic." A bit of stoicism can also lead to healing, can give people the strength to over come huge challenges, and eventually help lead others out of their darkness, too.
Yes, all of that is true. We can laugh at the Red Pills and Left Wing Whackos having TDS attacks, but ideas like these from people in positions of authority are dangerous. In a free country we can debate over political theory, religion, etc., but when empirical facts are starting to be declared 'relative' we could be headed for a lot of trouble.
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