I read this on Joe.My.God an sprained my eyes from rolling them so hard. This guy is a columnist for Catholic Exchange and clearly has some outdated thoughts on gender roles. Enjoy:
"As for that natural male aggressiveness; no longer is it guided toward its good and useful application, it’s just treated with Ritalin and deprogrammed away. And what do we have to show for it now? A metro-sexual class of soft-bellied fellas who are inept at taking charge and making decisions, yet are strangely proficient at plucking their own eyebrows in traffic as they head to their 4 o’clock pedi.
"My daughters are now young ladies and — please God — neither one of them seems very likely to become one of those overwhelmed moms who lie awake at night staring at the ceiling after coming to the horrible realization that they married their best girlfriend. Even so, I worry for all of those little boys out there whose parents have bought into the lie and just don’t get it. If I had had a young son sitting next to me watching the Olympics you can bet he wouldn’t be left to witness the charade of men’s figure skating without some much needed observations from his dear ol’ Neanderthal Dad." - Catholic Exchange columnist Louie Varrecchio, complaining about this year's Olympic male figure skaters.
Okay, never mind the irony of hearing about the merits of traditional masculinity from a dude who looks like Corky St. Clair from Waiting for Guffman. I have real issues with this kind of idealogy, even from his first statement. I can only imagine what Mr. Varrecchio thinks about gay or transgender people (I have a guess), but let's set even that aside for a moment.
I don't believe in "natural male aggressiveness," or at least not to the extent that folks like Varrecchio do. People have all sorts of relationships to their gender, not just the two sizes the Catholic Church tries to sell you. Of course being a straight male, Varrecchio has never had to think about gender representation much. If he were queer or trans or maybe even a straight woman- people who have had to think about such issues their entire lives- he would know better.
I think that boys are trained in aggression, not born with it. It's part of the whole "boys don't cry" dogma that people like Varrecchio perpetuate. It's problematic for men, who grow up unable to process emotion and subsequently channel everything into anger and aggression. Couple this with all the women out there who've been trained to be submissive and weak willed and you've got a real problem. It's a bummer for the rest of us, because these deficient people get to vote and make policy just like we do.
I also hope that Varrecchio's girls don't become overwhelmed moms who lie awake at night. That is, I hope they don't swallow the bullshit they've been handed by their father and their church and use birth control until they're ready to have children (if they want them.)
As for his dig at Johnny Weir, he is an Olympic athlete. What did you ever do besides writing poorly thought out opinion peices based on a prehistoric understanding of the world for a junk "newspaper." JERK!
And just to prove a point:
Louis
Corky
By the way, this is the exact moment in Waiting for Guffman when Corky is telling the camera crew that he imagined he would become a construction work "with the chaps" and perhaps "one of those sweeping kind of hats." Amazingness.
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