Tea at Trianon: The Masculinity Paradox

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, October 31, 2026

The Masculinity Paradox

From Unlicensed Punditry:

What follows is opinion and theory, but something that I think worth considering.
Unarguably, there is a peculiar contradiction developing across the Western world, and I have been turning over a theory that may explain at least part of it. For decades, Western feminism has treated traditional masculinity as a problem to be solved. Men were too aggressive, too competitive, too dominant, too protective, too determined to lead. The solution was supposedly to make men less masculine, to dismantle traditional expectations of male authority, and to construct a society in which distinctions between the sexes became increasingly irrelevant. Yet at precisely the moment Western civilization began congratulating itself for taming its men, it also began embracing large-scale migration from societies where traditional male authority remains considerably more pronounced. Perhaps these developments are entirely unrelated. Perhaps not.
The first step in understanding this contradiction is recognizing that equality and sameness are not interchangeable concepts. Men and women possess equal human worth and should enjoy equal protection under the law, but they are not biologically identical, nor are their average dispositions, preferences, and physical capabilities identical. Rather than accepting those differences, progressive ideology increasingly demanded that society compensate for them. Equality of opportunity gave way to equity of outcomes, and equity required intervention. Where men predominated, the presumption increasingly became that something discriminatory had occurred. Masculinity itself became suspect, particularly when expressed through leadership, competition, assertiveness, or the traditional obligation to protect women.
Western men responded in different ways. Some resisted, some adapted, and others simply withdrew. Generations of boys were increasingly taught that the characteristics once associated with responsible manhood were potentially toxic. The ideal man became less assertive, less confrontational, less traditionally masculine, and more deferential to female expectations. Meanwhile, women acquired unprecedented educational, professional, political, and economic influence. None of that necessarily required diminishing men, but influential strands of modern feminism often seemed unable to celebrate female achievement without treating traditional male authority as an obstacle to be overcome. (Read more.)