The Conversation We Won’t Have About Raising Men

RayRicePresserOn Thursday night, the Baltimore Ravens took on the Pittsburgh Steelers. The event carried national significance thanks to the Ravens’ public-induced decision to cut running back Ray Rice after tape emerged of Rice clocking his then-fiancee in the head, knocking her out cold. CBS sportscaster James Brown utilized his pregame show to draw attention to the problem of domestic violence — and suggest widespread culpability for domestic violence. “Our language is important,” Brown suggested. “For instance, when a guy says, ‘You throw the ball like a girl’ or ‘You’re a little sissy,’ it reflects an attitude that devalues women, and attitudes will eventually manifest in some fashion.”

Brown wasn’t the only commentator to blame “The Sandlot” for Ray Rice’s horrifying Mike Tyson-esque blow to his future wife’s head. ESPN commentator Kate Fagan explained, “This is behavior that is happening at the grassroots level that is born through years of our culture like raising men to want to not be like women and using language like ‘sissy’ and ‘you throw like a girl’ that demean women. … [We need to focus on] really reprogramming how we raise men.”

Naturally, this talking point was celebrated far and wide by a mainstream press more interested in perpetuating the tenets of political correctness than in actually fighting domestic abuse. The real solution to domestic abuse is twofold: punishing it to the greatest possible extent, and yes, raising young men differently. But to state that the greatest risk factor for future domestic violence is insulting other boys as “throwing like girls” is pure idiocy. No man has ever hit a woman because she “throws like a girl.” But plenty of young men have hit women because they had no moral compass and did not believe in basic concepts of virtue — and plenty of young men lack such a moral compass and belief in virtue thanks to lack of male role models.

Teaching respect for women begins with ensuring that solid male influences models fill the lives of young men — men who respect women, cherish them, treasure them, and believe in protecting them. This is an unpopular stance, because it suggests that boys require men to raise them. Which they do. But that truth doesn’t fit the logic of the left, which seems to think that lack of fathers counts less than rhetorically bothersome phrases.

For leftists, the answer to domestic violence isn’t to deal with any of the issues that could lead boys to become abusing men. The answer, instead, is to lecture Americans about the use of the word “sissy” — not because that solves the problem, but because it makes those on the left feel warm and fuzzy inside. Similarly, the left will tell Americans that the name of the Washington Redskins matters far more to Native-Americans than the nearly half of Native-American youths who drop out of high school; they will explain that “microaggressions” are the true problem faced by blacks in America, not lack of education, poverty or unwed motherhood.

We extol the language police even as we castigate moral authorities. And so our problems grow worse. But at least we feel better about them.

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  • Mo86

    How about women being taught not to be with abusive men?

  • The March Hare

    Watching how my father treated my mother was the prime lesson on how to treat women and everything else reinforced that. Now even many women are listening to rap that promotes disrespect to women. You can’t venerate something and yet teach that it’s wrong.

  • Gee

    Always the quick fix. That seems to be the culture today.

    Somebody hijacks an airplane so 90 year old grandmothers have to be searched. A criminal uses a gun – so ban guns, etc. etc.

    Instead of dealing with the real issues society deals with the manifestations that they see.

  • GinoMachiavelli

    Cultures cannot mix, but can evolve. …..or go extinct.

    We are at event horizon mark, methinks.

  • Walt L

    Calling women Bit..es and Ho’s in the lyrics of some so called music and blasting it as loud so that all can hear it has more demeaning value than calling a boy who cannot throw hard a sissy. Yet this very same culture will protect this type of lyrical hatred of women….

  • joe

    Ray Rice is a beast and a shameless bully, plain and simple. Explaining right and wrong to Rice would have the equivalent effect of, say, Patrick Stewart reading Les Miserables to an ox and expecting the ox to garner something of value. Janay would do well to climb up a six foot ladder with a fifty pound dumbbell in her hands and drop it on his vacant skull while he’s asleep. No doubt the NFL will reinstate this waste of human skin in short order.

  • http://twitter.com/#!/DavidWLincoln David W. Lincoln

    What is needed is more people to stand up to political correctness more often. Given the possibility of that not being the case, those who don’t want to listen will be accountable for more, than what is currently the case.

  • DennisMets

    one of the big problems is some families want to limit their families to 1, 2 or 3 kids that they can seend to good schools and support, the issue is with the little welfare hoes that are breeding at early teens and putting out so many welfare babies and kids raised on the streets with no respect for anyone or know how to treat others. they then go to school with decent people and kids and of course bully them. this is a huge problem in innercity with a lot of blacks and they blame the devil privileged whites on all their problems. that lead to hate for the white kids and the reason for the knock out games, until we get our population under control and stop rewarding welfare mammas for overpopulating the earth we are going to have these issues, but the politicians only want more votes so they will never stop this issue

  • krinks

    As someone once said; “You won’t be learn how to be a man unless you see a man”. 80% of blacks won’t. There in lies most of their problems.

    • Walter Goerlitz

      more of the liberal doctrine in its shameless destruction of black society.

  • Jimmy D

    Answer:
    You believe in God, His Son and the Holy Spirit. Then you learn the value of faith. That leads you to inquiring into the nature of God’s love as well as His capacity for wrath. “The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge…” Now you’ve begun to acquire one man “truly possessing these qualities”. Then you notice what becomes of individuals and societies that lack such faith. Then you pray and you take actions to increase your own faith and that of your community. You seek God’s will.
    To consider matters of leftists and blacks, I find that I am in need of God’s grace, if my head is not to explode.
    I want to start an Abolition Party.
    I want to abolish slavery.
    I believe slavery on earth can only end when eternal slavery is ended.
    I think the growing, metastasizing black hatred of whites might prove to be a good thing, if it were sharpened and tempered. I think blacks should learn to hate the whites who have pretended to care about them and help them, in order to get close enough to destroy them.
    I think they should hate the whites who have enslaved them in the violence and fear, poverty, and degradation of the inner cities, and the self loathing of utter dependancy. I think they should hate those whites who have pounced upon and promoted every imaginable evil to be found in the black community, and financed those who would sell it as the “new good”. I think they should hate those whites who have filled their communities with incentives to do nothing and a proliferation of “family services” death clinics for their unborn. I think they should get clear on why their are no more families in the black community. They did not choose all together now let’s just not have families. The white liberals arranged it to be the case for them. Their policies created that reality. Pause. Think. It’s true.
    The Bible tells us we should judge them “by their fruits”.
    The fruit of the white liberal racists remains to be an awful lot of very poisonous apples distributed “for free” to the black community. It does not matter or change anything, however often they point their fingers at others and cry, “Racist!” There is such a thing as white guilt, and deservedly so. Whether they are conscious in the evil they do or are merely creatures of vanity, wallowing in their pretended goodness, the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. The leftists gain when blacks hate whites and whites fear blacks. It plays to their evil game plan.

    It seems I am recommending hatred. The key to hating people who hate you lies in not becoming them. You must hate them in love. And that’s impossible. The only solution is to hate their evil but forgive them. What the liberals have created is a mass of Klansmen in blackface. Blacks must refuse to become Klansmen. The only solution is Christ. Martin Luther King did understand this for quite a long time.
    The marxists saw the frustration of their plans in his leadership. White Progressives funded the Black Revolutionaries who displaced him.
    He promoted love. They advanced the cause of hatred.

    The greatest thing that has been stolen from the black community is true faith and trust in God. The very same thing has happened to the White community, to all of us. The abolition of slavery is, first and foremost, a spiritual necessity. That’s why the Bible took it on face value. Whether free or a slave, it did not matter and it does not matter now. Neither does rich or poor, weak or powerful. We spend a few passing hours here and then we enter into eternity.

    And it matters to our eternal destiny, how we respond in this world, to the poor, the enslaved, the oppressed. White or black or in between, we all fall short, we all need a savior.

    We cannot become them, but, no matter how hard it is, we must forgive them. And then, fully aware of who their father is, we must defeat them.

  • tagalog

    How about the question of why the fiancée, now wife, of Mr. Rice, the alleged victim of the abuse in issue, is defending him and bad-mouthing those who seek to make something out of sports figures beating up on women? Could it be that she seeks to defend her meal ticket? She’s defending him today, but what will happen when the money stops coming in, and she gets a divorce? I bet the Ray Rice beating will once again surface when that happens, with the now-ex-wife telling quite a different story.

    Was Ray Rice raised by a single mother? If he comes from an intact male-female marriage, what kind of role model was his father?

  • MrUniteUs1

    Don Charles Spirit, age 51 vs. Ray Rice,

    Compare and contrast.

    Bell Shooting: Man Kills Daughter, Six Grandchildren, Commits Suicide In Florida

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/18/bell-shooting-_n_5846446.html

    • GhostFlame

      Your three links are very depressing. But the comments are even more depressing. Obviously our plea bargaining culture is partly to blame. And a culture of tolerance. But whenever someone points this out, especially at a liberal site, their only response is to accuse Republicans or conservatives, of being much worse than liberals. In fact, they are convinced they are completely to blame. Not to mention the 2nd amendment, and religion. Even back when I was an atheist in college, I knew over turning the 2nd amendment was a bad idea. Just as I knew there is a reason why freedom of speech and freedom of religion are in the same sentence.

      • MrUniteUs1

        Plea bargaining is based on who you know.

        Who you know is often based on race and class.

  • MrUniteUs1

    John Elway’s son arrested for Domestic Violence.

    http://www.denverpost.com/popular/ci_26558941?source=most_viewed

  • GhostFlame

    Hate to mention the video here, but he started it. I was surprised to read some copy at Huffington Post that she spit at him. So I watched the video about 20 times in a row, and have reached this conclusion; he spit on her at least twice before hitting her the first time. That’s why she gave him that little slap with the back of her hand. He spit at her!

    She then goes into the elevator, and leans against the wall. With her face turned away from Ray. He enters, and his head juts forward as he spits right in her face. It is here she turns to react, and he gets in his first left. She steps forward, and she may have spit at him in return. But in my opinion, she didn’t really have time, before that trip-hammer left decked her.

    Now, who knows what either of them brought to that casino, and the famous security camera. But clearly, they are a very mature, loving couple.

    • MrUniteUs1

      Rice is lucky his wife is alive. Not sure who spit on who when.
      Alcohol played a role.

  • Biff Henderson

    ‘You throw the ball like a girl’ or ‘You’re a little sissy,’

    The Left condemns anyone that voices an expectation that a given gender conform to stereotypical role models. To label a male’s behavior as effeminate is the act of a sexist bigot who’s is openly aggressive to another person’s right to express themselves as they see fit. If I see myself as a puppy man who likes to lick himself in public the same tolerance shown a dog for said behavior is withheld because they cling to a close-minded prejudice that leaves no room for the other.

    Don’t smother a brother like no other.

    Thanks, but no thanks.

  • vnamvet1969

    They are spoiled due to their athletic prowess, provided with a free education, and paid millions. But, their ghetto mentality remains. They are nurtured, protected, and put on a pedestal. We see the results.

  • Walter Goerlitz

    What you are seeing is how young black men have been indoctrinated into a hedonistic society in which what ever they want is what matters. The indoctrination of young black men by liberals is devastating.

  • DrMaxHathaway

    Sorry, but you are ill-informed.

    Most Black men are reared (not raised) by single black women who alternately adore them and, in some cases, abuse them.

    The repeated lamentations about absent Black fathers is unfounded.

    What African “Americans” have done in the USA is reprise their native African “culture”. —- A “culture” of promiscuity, laziness, violence, theft, murder that have deep genetic roots.

    Shallow “analyses” like yours fail to account for the fact that, on average, Blacks simply lack the intellectual capacity to compete in the modern world. hence we see only three types of “successful” blacks:

    1. the sports “star” who encourage the reign of Brute force by making a fortune off of physical prowess, but within the bounds of “sporting” conduct;

    2. the drug-dealers and other street thugs for whom there is no sportsman’s code;

    3. the victim class that take full advantage of Affirmative Action and its giveaway degree, title, offices and compensation, as exemplified by the like of Obama, Sharpton, Jackson, Cummings, etc.

  • AbsolutelyRight

    Why are the feminists complaining? At least Ray Rice didn’t “bust-a-cap in da ho’s behind.”