Wimps & Barbarians
Here’s a treatise on manhood that you won’t find written by Bill Moyers: "Wimps & Barbarians - the Sons of Murphy Brown" by Terence O. Moore, former active-duty Marine (ain’t no such thing as an ex-Marine), college professor and now charter school principal. As a male whose father died during adolescence and parent to boys I am keen to discover why society simply doesn’t know how to handle men. Freud believed that men struggled between visions of women as "madonnas and whores", but it is clear that our society has the same problem with men - shown here by the terms Wimps and Barbarians. Perhaps it is due to the apparent need by men to be "imprinted" or taught what it means to be a man, a need that women don’t seem to have.
Moore suggests that today’s boys must look to their grandfathers or even great-grandfathers. I don’t think it’s a bad idea for fathers to do the same since my generation of males seem to be clueless as to what being a man means as well. It is never to late to learn. No woman wants a weepy man, nor does she need an asshole on the couch whose idea of caring is to put the seat up.
