Letter to the Editor: Masculinity’s role in pop culture, history

Dr. Julio Cesar Pino

Editor’s note: This is in response to Amanda Anastasia Paniagua’s opinion piece titled “A rebuttal, toxic masculinity” published on Oct. 18, 2015.

Dear Editor:

First, permit me to send out mucho and macho greetings to all those men and women who applauded my publications in The Kent Stater in defense of masculinity, and a special shout out to that brother who made a YouTube video gone viral.

I am most pleased Ms. Paniagua and I share similar movie preferences, per her opinion piece of October 18. I, too, have seen “Mean Girls”; that’s because I’ll watch anything starring Lindsay Lohan. (Yes, even “Liz & Dick”.) However, turning to lacrosse for sublimation of female aggression strikes me as odd. I much prefer the way Winona Ryder handled mean girls in “Heathers;” hang them, poison them and make it all look like suicide. Now, that’s one tough mama.

Ms. Paniagua and I both savored “The Black Power Mixtape” and “Fight Club,” while obviously looking at different copies. The Black Panthers were all about picking up the gun, not running endless sensitivity sessions on the proper role for the Black male; nor did they pander to Democratic party politicians to do the right thing, a la’ BlackLivesMatter. Excuse me, “Fight Club” chronicles the struggles of young men suffocated by a “capitalist hyper masculine society”? Au contraire. FC depicts a hyper feminized society rapidly sinking under the waves of fashionista fascism. Quoth Tyler Durden: “We’re a generation of men raised by women…Martha Stewart is polishing the brass on the deck of the Titanic”. Is it any wonder that in such a society, which stigmatizes all forms of male aggression as inherently evil, a handful of men will act out pathological scenes of violence? That’s what Elliot Rodger and Dylan Roof are – actors – pantomiming masculinity rather than doing the hard work of evolving beyond the beta male.

The historical record is quite clear: Men who are masculine succeed in life, while those who get in touch with their feminine side fail. Take the presidency. You think of Eisenhower, JFK, and LBJ; tough, testicular guys bursting with masculinity. Starting with Richard Nixon, the eunuchs took over the palace – I mean the White House – and the U.S. has suffered from a long string of castrati ever since. What a shame, with such a cast of losers at the top of the totem pole in this hyper feminized America, that young males must turn to fiction for role models on how to be a man.

“His name was Robert Paulson,” and he approved this message.

Dr. Julio Cesar Pino