When the Māori conquered the Moriori in the South Pacific in the mid-19th century, they proceeded to kill most of the fighting-age men and boys. The process, known as “androcide,” has occurred numerous times in history. The idea: Neuter a society by eliminating masculinity — in this case, by eliminating the masculine sex itself — and it’s yours. Rebellion against you is removed from the equation.

But there’s another way of neutering a society, too: Killing manhood emotionally and spiritually.

A person who apparently would say this is now happening, at least to an extent, is clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson. In fact, he expounded upon this in a video last Tuesday titled “This Is What Happens When You Erase Masculinity.”

War on Boys

More than a generation ago, in 2000, Christina Hoff Sommers wrote the then-famous book The War Against Boys. And in his video, Peterson relates a personal anecdote about a casualty (a “wounding,” not a killing) of that war.

After reviewing his 13-year-old son’s fair-to-middling but not stellar report card, he asked his boy about it. “Well, Dad, I’m doing pretty well,” junior replied. “I’m doing really well for a boy.”

Peterson was shocked. “I thought, I’d never heard him say anything like that,” he said. “And it was certainly nothing that he had picked up at home. And it was quite striking to me because for him that was just matter of fact.”

“Now that’s an implicit presupposition that the boys underperform the girls,” Peterson continued. “That was certainly not a presupposition when I was his age. And it wasn’t anything that was appropriate for him because there’s nothing wrong with his mind….”

It certainly wasn’t a presupposition when I was that age, either. In fact, my elementary school’s co-valedictorians (it was a “tie”) were both boys. So times have certainly changed.

The Doctor’s Diagnosis

Peterson then explained what he believes affected his son, and what hobbles boys generally, stating:

I’ve observed that … the school system is not set up for them in the least. The vast majority of teachers are not only female, but infantilizing-female and radically left. Boys play preferences are denigrated. They’re required to sit for hours at a time, which is not in keeping with their nature, especially if they’re active, in which case they get diagnosed with ADHD and get put on methylphenidate [Ritalin], which suppresses play behavior as one of its primary functions. And then they’re told that competitive games are wrong “because we should all cooperate” by people who are too stupid to notice that competitive games are cooperative because everybody’s playing by the same rules. And then they’re told that … boys’ ambition is pathological, and that the patriarchy is — and marriage for that matter is — an oppressive institution. And if they manage to escape from all that, then they’re told that the activities of males are destroying the planet. And that’s pretty much comprehensive evil-queen pathology as far as I’m concerned.

One point above that’s questionable is that about boys being “required to sit for hours at a time.” This is frequently mentioned, and it is true that boys are the more active, boisterous sex. (Hence the phrase “bouncing baby boy.”) Yet it isn’t a new phenomenon. Boys were not only required to sit still in school in the early 1900s, but stricter discipline to achieve compliance could be and was applied. And the lads were not underachieving back then. Today, schools are too often zoos with weak, impotent keepers.

Feminine Norms

Peterson is correct, though, in saying what can be phrased thus: Feminine norms have become the default. This is partially because of a feminism-driven, tendentious way of viewing matters that magnifies male sin while ignoring male accomplishment.

For example, we hear much about how men commit most murders and “started almost all the wars.” Now, never mind the 2019 research showing that, historically, queens were 38.8 percent more likely than kings to wage war. The real point is something else.

Men are also responsible for virtually all scientific and medical advancements — triumphs that have saved literally billions of lives.

In fact, our population is eight billion-plus today not because people started breeding like rabbits, but because they stopped dropping like flies — again, owing to male endeavor.

This truth is not only obscured in schoolbooks via feminism-inspired revisionist history, but sloughed off with a double standard. Characteristic “male sins” (e.g., violent crime) are attributed to biology; “It’s all that testosterone!” But characteristic male triumphs (e.g., invention, innovation) are dismissed as merely a function of greater opportunity. “Women could do it, too!” These amateur sociologists are alternately both biological determinists and behaviorists — depending on what suits their agenda at the moment.

This said, the occasional feminist does recognize masculine endeavor’s necessity. Just consider the iconoclastic Camille Paglia. “If civilization had been left in female hands,” she stated, waxing polemical, “we would still be living in grass huts.”

The Divine Masculine

Returning to Peterson, he explains the need for masculine energy. He states that order and chaos are fundamental psychological and mythological forces. Chaos represents the unknown, potential, and terror; order represents structure, tradition, and stability. And man thrives by navigating between these two forces.

Across cultures, Peterson elaborates, masculinity traditionally embodies order, creating structure, laws, and protection. Healthy masculinity provides discipline, strength, and vision, building rather than destroying. Without masculine order, chaos ensures instability and arbitrariness.

The reality, too, is that without masculine order, there is masculine disorder. As philosopher G.K. Chesterton once wrote:

What is called matriarchy is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible.

Cultivating Dynamism

Unfortunately, our modern fashions do little to encourage that male-dynamism-born order. And the problem is that society today, detached from Truth, looks to “new ideas” instead of ageless ones. Consider the concept of “toxic masculinity,” a category which generally includes both negative and positive traits. If we instead applied the virtues — that set of objectively good moral habits — this demonization of the positive wouldn’t occur. (Examples of virtues: Charity, Chastity, Courage, Diligence, Love, Honesty, Faith, Kindness, and Prudence.)

The beauty of the virtues, which derive from Truth, is their universality. They can be applied to either sex and any given person — and they reveal how it or he really measures up. They are the ultimate moral yardstick.

To illustrate this and much of what else has been discussed in this article, consider a test in which tiny boys and girls were given salted lemonade so that their reactions could be analyzed. Not surprisingly, the lads were blunt (“That’s disgusting!”), whereas the lasses often lied about their feelings (“I loved it!”). Also not surprisingly, the girls’ behavior was implicitly treated as the gold standard. The boys, it was said, were behind them developmentally and lacked “empathy.”

We Must Apply the Virtues

Yet this is a shallow analysis. First, is it really true that the girls fudged matters only because they cared about the lemonade maker’s feelings? It’s also possible they were concerned about retaining that adult’s affection, which would be a selfish motivation. It’s quite likely, too, that with some girls, both motivations were factors (people are complex).

Second, the main point is this: Such analyses will only be correct and complete when applying the virtues. And, yes, that yardstick will show that the boys do perhaps need to cultivate Kindness and Charity. But it will also show that the girls need to cultivate Honesty (and maybe Prudence), a very important quality. Virtues’ application provides the entire picture, not just the few pieces feminists, multiculturalists, or other “ists” want you to see.

The reality is that whether talking about erasing masculinity or another issue, the problem is always the same. We have social engineers who seek insight via today’s tastes, such as “toxic masculinity,” and not timeless truths. They try to reinvent the wheel and inadvertently make it square. Then they wonder why the car of our culture is crashing and burning.

For those interested, the two earlier-cited Peterson videos and the empathy-test one are below.