Blogger/podcaster Brett McKay has invented a small empire in the Art of Manliness, a faux-rustic compendium of what it means to be a man today. Based on the comments of mine that he censors, being a man today always involves eating meat and hunting animals.
- Another panegyric to Chris Duffin, an army of one whom neither you nor anyone you know nor anyone else will ever duplicate:
And again we have one-in-10-million specimen Chris Duffin instructing men to be emotionally strong and simply prioritize going to the gym at a powerlifting level.
The Art of Manliness: Where mental illness is an excuse and where the lessons of women “having it all” go unlearned.
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Men need packs or tribes, but do they have to be packs of gun-nut carnivores? (In other words, of Republicans?) Ask the Athlete Vanguard. Or don’t, because McKay will delete your questions.
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“Odd men out” are implicitly not welcome at the Art of Manliness either, are they, Brett?
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You seriously want to teach your boys how to assault other men with weapons (ostensibly in “self-defence”) and kill, skin, and gut animals?
In the 21st century?
These are the men you want your boys to become?
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Is the Art of Manliness willing to ever countenance any conception of manliness that does not involve guns, knives, weapons, and animal abuse? (Take a wild guess.)
Someday, you American gun nuts with your lightly-rebranded survivalist training weekends will come to the realization that harming animals is in no way, shape, or form part and parcel of “manliness.”
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“Don’t just read the Art of Manliness. Shoot the Art of Manliness’ pets!”
You seem to have equated cessation with action here (stopping smoking pot and “hanging out with girls”). What I don’t see included are ethical choices made long ago which a man does not intend to change. Just as examples: not hunting, not eating meat, not wearing fur, not hurting animals, not playing with guns ’n’ ammo, not pretending “MMA” is a “sport,” not beating the shit out of men, women, children, dogs, cats, ferrets, or blog editors, and at root not signing on to barely-warmed-over 19th-century-frontiersman conceptions of “manliness” that involve weapons, suffering, domination, and death.
Try Instagramming that.
When asked a couple of times via E-mail why he censors such comments, McKay did not answer. I presume it is because, as a Mormon, he believes Man has dominion over the creatures of the Earth. (And that individual men will have dominion over their own post-Rapture homeworlds.) Advocates of manliness, as distinct from men’s-rights advocates, are difficult to like.
Here’s a shocker, though: McKay let one comment of mine stand.
A gentleman has the ability… to ride roughshod over your interests, muscle you aside, and manipulate you… but, he has instead voluntarily chosen to restrain himself to follow a more moral course
Including a “moral course” like refusing to hunt or refusing to eat meat? The Art of Manliness’ position is that men should do the former and must do the latter.
Here, by the way, is McKay’s photo of himself in his how-to-stand-with-good-posture-as-a-man “De-Quasimodo Yourself” posting.
