I try to discipline myself for own academic living purpuses rather than for this frivolous topic. But let me say this about that.

The Quilette article says:

As David Gilmore's cross-cultural study of men shows (1990), in the small handful of cultures without patriarchy, men live a narcissistic Peter Pan existence, putting very little into the community and leaving most of the labor to women. Such societies have not developed beyond a rudimentary level, and cannot compete with their more highly organized and structured neighbors. This is why there are so few of them.

I mentioned Marquez' novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" here recently. It is an epic of a matriarchal family, with rather strong, bright women and quite lacking Chose Arcadios, Aurelianos. What was this family line missing for avoiding a sad fate? I would say, real men. There is not much more to ask from the women, given the Peter Pan men indeed.

If the Democratic party becomes (so to speak) matriarchal, I would feel concerned about its fortunes against the Republicans. Honestly.

The two most prominent moral philosophers of the Enlightenment were David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Hume was a great empiricist, and he followed British sentimentalists in basing morality in exhibited values, sentiments of emotional, striving living humans. Kant formulated an abstract, universal moral reality based on reason.

The modern woke progressives are clearly Kantians, with strong intellectual sentiments about justice, equality, autonomy. They have laws how humans should be, but little interest how they really are.

Imagine a dystopian world where visceral human sentiments regarding sex are quite the opposite of what  Kantian intellectuals conclude or may ever imagine. The thinking guys are fooled by smooth talk that implies that they have to follow their Kantian sentiments more earnestly, while in reality they thereby place themselves rather low for female preferences. A good deal of male boldness, domination is appreciated actually much better. Smart girls do not even know that they would not be really attracted to anyone less smart or cool than themselves. Equal or educated marriages are painfully unstable, while apparently awful patriarchal families are much smoother, have more kids. How would you want to help the progressives in this dystopian world?

It is good to remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs indeed. How should we know what self-actualization really means for humans of both genders? In the Kantian way, or in the Humean way? Hume was good with ladies in Paris salons. Kant never married.

Here is another Quilette article:

Video Games and the (Male) Meaning of Life

UK army recruitment ads target 'snowflake' millennials

The campaign, featuring posters and TV ads titled Your Army Needs You, suggests that what is seen as a weakness or a character flaw by the rest of society can be seen as a strength by the army. The campaign states that the army could use the "compassion" of "snowflakes", the "self-belief" of millennials, the "confidence" of selfie takers, and the "focus" of phone zombies.

A remittance man is a historic term for an emigrant, often from Britain to a colony, supported by regular payments from home, on the expectation that he stay away [...]

Historian Monica Rico describes in Nature's Noblemen: Transatlantic Masculinities and the Nineteenth-Century American West (2013) how the figure emerged in the 1880s: "Unable to succeed in Britain [...] the remittance man represented the utter failure of elite British masculinity to function in the modern world." Where he was to go was a wide-open question. The British Empire offered wide-open spaces and possibilities of redemption in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and colonial parts of Africa; some thought the American West was also an appropriate destination. Rico concludes that "the remittance man, in his weakness, symbolized his culture's fear that British masculinity was imperiled both in Britain and abroad."

[...] They were "everlasting sources of enjoyment and personal gain" for the tough ranchers and early colonists, "the natural butt of the cowboys' jokes". Remittance men were held in scorn by all, even "solid contempt", and were considered easy marks by conmen and tellers of tall tales. Some, however, won redemption by, for example, joining the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the Yukon.

Close relationship in "morals" between orthodox Protestants and American right-wing extremists. US Democrats look in your own backyard before propagandizing homophobia in Russia for political reasons #SochiOlympics #Putin. Same as #Israel using the #GayParade for public relations. A "moral" stance to paint over the inhumane treatment of minority groups in their own nations. Take off that smirk on your faces, or is it a mask you are wearing?

Anti-LGBTQ manifesto signed by hundreds of Dutch Protestant Pastors | Dutch Review |

Important members of the Dutch Protestant church, including Dutch pastors, university lecturers and an MP of SGP (the fundamentalist Christian party) Van der Staaij, have signed a manifesto which is targeted against the LGBTQ community. Hundreds have signed and it's important to point out that these folks are part of the very orthodox part of the Protestant church in the Netherlands. Also, it's vital to declare that this a disgusting and dividing statement which we, and you as well hopefully, strongly reject.

This manifesto is a direct translation of another 2017 manifesto the `Nashville declaration' in the United States.

What does it actually say?

Here is the Dutch version of the manifesto. But for the people who can't read Dutch, here is some of the translation (RTLnieuws):

"WE CONFIRM that God intended marriage as a lifelong covenant relationship between one man and one woman, within which sexuality has a place and from which children are brought. The purpose of marriage is to make the covenant love between Christ and His bride, the Church, visible. WE DENY that God meant marriage as a homosexual, polygamous or polyamorous relationship. We also deny that marriage is a mere human contract instead of a covenant made for God."  

○ Holland Heritage: Hoekstra - DeVos - Erik Prince

'Sapere aude'

'The Water Cure' Imagines What The World Would Be Like If Toxic Masculinity Were An Actual Toxin

On a remote island off the coast of an unspecified continent, three sisters -- Grace, Lia, and Sky -- are hidden away from the world. It's a world where the water is poisoned, the air is polluted, and men are literally toxic. Their home, a large, crumbling mansion that once served as a rehabilitation center for abused women, is surrounded by shark-infested waters on one side and barbed wire on the other. Their father, called King, is the only man the sisters have ever seen; their mother administers unconventional therapies and performs cult-like rituals designed to strengthen the girls against the poisoned planet. Then, King disappears. This is where author Sophie Mackintosh's debut novel, The Water Cure -- longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize -- begins.

1. The only purpose I have ever discerned for sociology as a field of study is to absorb people who lack the wit and will to learn enough medical jargon to bollocks their way through psychology.  People like Geoff Dench.
   
2. This article is absolute rubbish.  It is the reverse side of Riane Eisler's "The Chalice and the Blade" rubbish, torturing history and archeology for a political end.  Men have historically had a minimal and marginal social role?  Well maybe in the case of Dench and his ilk; I mean who would want them around (A pity his family couldn't have made him a remittance man, but the Sun had already set on the Empire.)?  But historically that's demonstrably exactly wrong.  But then Dench gets even wronger by blaming all current male ills (I'm surprised there isn't a reference to ED medication somewhere in his article.) on women wanting a better seat at the table.  Apparently the Industrial Revolution (shifting men from the land to the factory, thus severing them from production of household goods and daily household activities, and shifting families from extended to nuclear, thus decreasing the role of the older generation but especially older men) had nothing to do with it, and neither has the De-Industrial Revolution (destroying the living wage, blue collar jobs the majority of men have occupied until recently and essentially reducing them to economic and so social redundancy).  Nope, blame it all on them wimmins.  It's no wonder Dench converted to Anglo-Catholicism, the last refuge of those who believe Arthurian legends are a true representation of the Middle Ages and long to drag the world back there but don't want to be obligated to accept some hard-nosed Jesuit telling them how full of dreck they are.