A piece in the Washington Times caught my attention this week. It centered on a subject that the Trumpet has commented on from time to time—the emasculation of men and boys by Anglo-Saxon media.

Let me say from the beginning that I am totally secure in my manhood. I was born a male. I have thoroughly enjoyed my masculine roles as boy, youth, husband, father, grandfather. One of my greatest joys has been to see a third generation of boys in our family raised to be real men, with no confusion about their clear identity. Our extended family has been entirely successful in completely countering the influence of the feminization of society on it.

Thus it is with complete confidence in my male role that I will go on opening doors for women, offering to carry their bags, offering my seat to them and generally regarding them in their God-given roles as the physically weaker (not weak) vessel (1 Peter 3:7) in need of strong masculine protection for their general security. I will remain the provider for my wife and her leader in our marriage.

These are all God-given rights that I will yield up to no power, state or individual.

Having got that off my chest, let me quote some insightful text from that Washington Times article (August 1):

Casual observation of popular culture reveals that boys and men increasingly are being portrayed negatively, in contrast to women, who invariably are seen as more competent, efficient, successful and in charge. Television and Hollywood movies are producing a tsunami of negative stereotypes depicting guys as losers. The typical male portrayed in the entertainment media is clueless, socially inept, irresponsible and immature. He invariably disappoints the women around him ….

This is the stereotype that is being channeled into the minds of upcoming generations by their most influential source of education, the mass media.

The Times highlights a whole rash of current-day television sitcoms as guilty of peddling the theme of the emasculation of men:

Television sitcoms offer evidence of the historical devaluation of male traits in American culture. In the 1950s and 1960s, male characters were strong, yet sensitive to the needs of others. They were men who treated others, including women and children, with respect—men like Fred MacMurray in My Three Sons, Robert Young in Father Knows Best and Andy Griffith in The Andy Griffith Show. The qualities of the heroic men in those shows are quite a contrast to the cluelessness of Homer Simpson in The Simpsons, the ignorance of Carroll O’Connor in All in the Family, the degradation of Two and a Half Men, the stupidity of George Clooney’s Men Who Stare at Goats, the crudity and childishness of The Hangover, and the mockery of What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

We have often pointed to the feminization and homosexualization of Anglo-Saxon society yielding mass societal confusion as prophesied by the Creator for these times. The Prophet Isaiah declares of our day, “For behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, does take away from Jerusalem and from Judah … the mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, the captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counselor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator” (Isaiah 3:1-3). So much for the once virile manhood of the Anglo-Saxons and Jewry, once such a potent force in the family units of those peoples!

And the reason for this emasculation of the world’s previously most influential societies?

Let the Creator answer through His prophet: “O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths” (verse 12).

Surely there is no clearer example of this than British “leadership” today.

“Fathers are already disappearing. At the end of May, the National Health Service, the largest employer in Britain—and the fifth largest in the world—took the decision to excise the six-letter f-word from a pamphlet on rearing children that it has been giving to mothers- and fathers-to-be for the past 14 years. The pamphlet will no longer refer to fathers following a complaint from one person—yes, that is all it takes to airbrush people from history in modern Britain—who was concerned that such terminology is ‘not inclusive of people in same-sex relationships.’ From now on the pamphlet will refer to mothers and ‘partners.’ Dads are so 20th century” (American Conservative, July 30).

Who is to blame for this politically correct onslaught in Britain on the masculine gender?

“As part of the drive towards institutionalizing same-sex marriage—which is being spearheaded not by radical gays but by our posh, foppish Conservative prime minister, David Cameron—words such as ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ and ‘father’ and ‘mother’ are being airbrushed from much official government documentation” (ibid).

The grave danger that the denigration of manhood poses to a once stable society is that it chips away at the very foundation of stable authority within that society. As Janice Shaw Crouse, author of Marriage Matters, correctly observes:

Radical feminism’s disrespect for men and manliness has been especially harmful for children’s well-being because it calls into question all adult authority, including their fathers’. Cartoons, popular movies and television programs portray dads and other male authority figures as out of touch, old-fashioned and prudish. Children regularly are bombarded by derogatory media images of adults who respect or exemplify traditional moral values. Such adults typically are held in contempt, subtly mocked or openly ridiculed. Males in positions of authority and men who hold traditional values and beliefs often are portrayed as buffoons whom no one respects or admires.

Years ago, Herbert Armstrong wrote a very prophetic little booklet on this phenomenon. It was simply titled, Why Marriage! Soon Obsolete?

You ought to read it.

In that booklet Herbert Armstrong foresaw the destruction of Anglo-Saxon society in the wake of the denigration of the divine institution of marriage and the neutering of the God-given male and female roles. How his words should ring in our ears today! For, of a truth, we are literally living out, daily, in Western society, those very prophecies penned by the ancient Prophet Isaiah!