“The Rise of Divorce, the Death of Religion, and the Lies of the Church”
This article was originally going to be about communication. Still, during my research, I became aware of the church's antiquated view of masculinity and what it means to be a man according to old-fashioned thinking.
It's somewhat amusing that the catalyst for this opinion piece came from watching an Instagram or Facebook live of Blueface and his girlfriend (whose name I'm not bothering to look up, as I don't want men to send her numerous amounts of unwanted hate. This isn't really about either of them anyway). In this particular live, she asked him to get off innumerable times before throwing vases at him to force him off live.
You may be thinking, “What does this have to do with the church?” Bear with me; there is a method to my madness. As I watched the video, my counseling training kicked in, and I began asking essential questions like, “What were they fighting about initially before the video started?” “Why didn't he just be the bigger person and get off live?” “Why did she want him to get off live?” and “What are his justifications for staying on?” Blueface said (albeit after telling the commenter that they were the problem insert eye-roll here) the most common male excuse when they cause a woman to act irrationally and then torment them by pretending they're calm, cool, and collected because “look at how she's acting, I don't act like that.” They should have said, “I'm not acting like that right now,” but I digress. He said, “Oh, so because I'm gaslighting her, that means it's okay for her to act like that? Nah, YOU'RE the problem,” as he pointed a defiant finger at the camera. Then my husband said, “Exactly...” and I rolled my eyes.
The problem with this is that no one is right or wrong here. I've said this to my husband and others thousands of times, and it still shocks me that it's such a complex concept to grasp. Men's avoidance of emotions is why women leave their passionless and loveless marriages. Women don't need men to survive anymore, so the men they decide to date have to be able to give them more in the intimacy department because they are no longer forced to settle for men who are only financially secure. Society is rapidly moving away from gender roles that have defined relationships in the past, and women need more from men.
Once I began thinking along those lines, I wondered why men have chosen to believe that the sexual freedom women have now (what men would prefer to call promiscuity) compared to previous generations, women being gold diggers and not wanting to work, and the lack of religiosity (especially on this last point because most men that tout this as an excuse are the ones least likely to live according to the rules of the Bible) are the core issues plaguing men and their ability to have successful marriages or relationships.
Then I asked the question that ultimately led me to the title of this piece: “Who is perpetuating this antiquated view of masculinity in a social climate that is calling for change vociferously?” The answer is the church. The church is what is perpetuating this lie, and that's the actual cause of the rise in divorce rates. Their refusal to allow for diversity within the church is causing people to become disaffected by its rigid gender roles and stereotypes. How it becomes mainstream is how I got here, it all comes full circle. Blueface is just as much of a victim as the rest of us. Albeit with an audience that the average man typically doesn’t have.
My point is it doesn’t start with Blueface. He’s not the ultra-religious man that I’m referring to. However, I notice that men in his age range have adopted a more modern form of conservatism that still serves the church's goals but also allows men to camouflage their abuse of women in the name of equality. It trickles down from church leaders, those church leaders (who often have investments outside of the church that allows them to perform as lobbyists for not only the church but also whatever corporations they’ve invested in or represent that’s allowing them to accumulate the wealth that they have) who donate to political action committee’s (PACs) who lobby conservative politicians to vote in favor of legislation that seeks to serve corporations and protect investors rather than serve the American people. Then there are people like Ron Desantis, J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley, Lauren Bobert, and Matt Gaetz, who are representative of the new generation of conservatives but are also young enough to know that the church’s core message needs to be translated into a way that’s relatable to young people searching for a person or thing to point to as the cause of their problems. Presented with an opportunity to capitalize on all of the money that Donald Trump was creating for Republicans of all shapes and sizes, they seized the moment and profited hugely. They distorted the message and made it attractive to the thousands of men who feel they’re being left behind and scrutinized while trying to come to terms with the fact that the “American Dream” wasn’t what they’d thought it’d be.
Anyways, the generation of people that were born right before mine, “Gen X,” came about during the initial introduction of tech; the only real difference between Gen X and Millennials is that Gen X cares a little less about the well-being of others. My parents are boomers, and these are the boomers' children, (that’s what makes me a weirdo outlier, I had parents that were boomers, not parents who were Gen X, while most of my friends' parents were going from their late 20s into their early to late 30s, my parents were 20 years older and were way slower in hopping on the technology chain in the early 2000s), they’re more tech-savvy and business-oriented, more of that cutthroat kind of behavior you see mirrored in reality TV shows, dramas, and of course movies like the Wolf of Wal street (or was that originally a book? Who cares, not the point) during that era. Millennials are more socially aware and are a little bit more conscious of the difficulties that plague modern society daily. Think of them as the “on-the-ground” fighters. They know how difficult it is to survive, so they call for policy change. At the same time, Gen X seems to have adopted the mindset that instead of changing the inequality and believing that we can have a more diverse society, to accept things as if there isn’t an ability to change things like there isn’t a point to protesting or demonstrating, and just decided to adapt to the system by whatever means necessary. These are the Ron Desantis and Josh Hawley’s of the world.
Gen X isn’t completely crippled by technology and modernization as the boomers, and it makes them the ideal candidates to eventually replace the current GOP and use language attractive to Millennials and Gen Z. The next tier in this are people like Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, Steven Crowder, Tim Poole, Peter Thiel, Blair White, Tomi Lahren, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram, Kelly Ann Conway, and friends all come into play. They’re a hodge podge of “News” (I feel like I don’t have to tell you why that’s in quotes) Anchors, TV Show Hosts, Political Pundits and Commentators, and YouTube influencers that take the already attractive message and then claim it is under attack by whatever “woke” organization that’s seeking equality that day, whether it be transgender people, the gays, feminists, anti-racists, Antifa, black people, Mexicans, and any other minority group whose being harmed by our outdated system of government. They’re the ones that spread the message, incite the Twitter mobs, and blame the proverbial “other” to initiate the small portions of society that are disillusioned with change (changes, mind you, that have been in the process of changing for, fuck, at least a decade or more) and believe that any rights gained by any other disaffected group of people, means rights that they’re in danger of losing (obviously, this is a false assumption).
So after the Matt Walsh’s and Ben Shapiro’s, and Candace Owens’s of the world have successfully achieved brainwashing their audience, we get to people like Blueface, who hear these money-hungry scumbags do things like victim blame women who have been sexually assaulted (for example, Christine Blase Ford) and then listen to people on the left tout equality for women and then you wonder why he thinks it’s okay to gaslight and beat up his girlfriend on Facebook Live, it’s also why a bunch of losers on the internet are encouraging it and taking the disgusting stance that he’s right. Blueface is just the result of another fucked up corporate game to attempt to divide and conquer, and we are letting them win, and it’s gross. We can do better than this. We can do better than this by simply raising the bar a little bit. Like in the South Park Episode where James Cameron attempts to find the societal bar we have let drop so low, and Kyle says,
“How did this happen? How did we let the bar get SO low?!” he asks Tolkein as Cartman and Honey Boo Boo are “Sgetti” wrestling on mobility scooters in the background.
We need to ask ourselves, how the fuck did WE let the bar get so low?