Dear CD,
I'm always open to debate with honorable men and you fit the bill. We will be having our second official think tank with as many constructive men as we can get in 2009, and you are welcome to take part then.

Yet I still game for good debate right now, as long as it won't be an "apples and oranges" or a devils advocate one, for I'm only interested in real positions. I'll be happy for you to change my opinion if it is superior to mine. Likewise I assume you are the same!

Timocrat the deep thinker "gets" it. He understands beyond!

Quote from Timocrat

Dear CD,
We will be having our second official think tank with as many constructive men as we can get in 2009, and you are welcome to take part then.

Thank you, I yearn for such!

Quote from Timocrat

Yet I still game for good debate right now, as long as it won't be an "apples and oranges" or a devils advocate one, for I'm only interested in real positions. I'll be happy for you to change my opinion if it is superior to mine. Likewise I assume you are the same!

Absolutely brother. I believe you share my sense of intellectual frustration.

Timocrat says:

Yet I still game for good debate right now

I thirst for this.

Alright CD. How about a topic? I think you want someone to provide one? How about:

What makes a man effeminate?

I'll let you start, unless you have another topic in mind.

The constructive purpose of this topic is to get men to look inside themselves to see if they can change themselves to be better footsoldiers for the cause, instead of rag on about feminists, the state etc. If we start to look inside we may avoid locking horns with other men over ego and the personal or the small petty (which is one thing effeminates tend to do in my model for effeminate traits) and instead debate keys to success.

Then as the issue becomes a personal struggle to change oneself, instead of resting blame and responsibiity on others to change or get things done for all, we may see a real shift in our movement to succeed . Sound good CD ?

Debate at an intellectual level is needed in the MRM.

There are many areas that need deep discussion and an opportunity for men to tease out the real from the ephemeral. And we must take some care about 'setting up' to fail.

Which is what I see happening to this:

The constructive purpose of this topic is to get men to look inside themselves to see if they can change themselves to be better footsoldiers for the cause, instead of rag on about feminists, the state etc. If we start to look inside we may avoid locking horns with other men over ego and the personal or the small petty (which is one thing effeminates tend to do in my model for effeminate traits) and instead debate keys to success.

This under the heading "What makes a man Effeminate"?

The initial 'constructive purpose' is (to my mind) a good one but undermined by a question that asks us to look in the wrong direction.

Bugger what makes a man effeminate. What makes him a Man, is more to the point. There are a thousand directions to avoid going toward and effeminacy is merely one.

What makes a man, a man?

I have no predetermined template in my mind as to what a man is - or 'should' be. Feminazis tell us continually what a man 'should be'. Women, from mothers moments after giving birth, are constantly telling men how and who and what they 'should' be. To my mind, if he is a man, he can be whatever he damned well chooses and if he wants to don a dress and lippy, that's his friggin' business. It might even be his 'nature'.

I have met Great Men in my time. Worked with great men. They were all different. One great man I met was a Colonel, a bemedalled warrior, a leader of men, whose leadership and Character was so strong that he could wear a cocktail dress to a Dining-In night in the Mess and no-one turned a hair.

Was he effeminate? I doubt anyone here would say it to his face and walk off without a broken nose.

What we need is to find, discuss, analyse, men who rise above mere gender 'models' to seek higher order characteristics, issues of Character. Issues of Humanity.

The effeminate man who understands and revers Truth and Justice, sweat and tears to achieve for Good, is far more of a Man than the weak rager who cannot even control his thoughts let alone his mouth.

Why?

Because Truth and Justice and sweat and tears to achieve for Good is a common acquisition / aspiration for masculine men and feminine women and all in between - if they care to rise to it.

personal or the small petty (which is one thing effeminates tend to do in my model for effeminate traits)

This is telling. A Freudian slip perhaps. This person or that may have a 'model' for 'effeminate traits', but that is their personal, small, petty issue and I have no need for it to become a 'model' for anyone else, let alone for the MRM.

The MRM seeks Men's Rights.

To my mind, Men's Rights are Everygoddamnedbody's Rights.

I am a Man. I seek no special rights for men. I seek Truth and Justice and heavenstoBetsy, strighforward Equality of all adults before the Law.

I seek Freedom to be whoever I friggin' choose to be, rather than conform to what someone else chooses for me.

The choice that a fully functioning, adult man usually wants to make, but all too often is cajoled out of, is discovering and honouring his own deep nature - who he is - and the determining of who is is to grow into tomorrow.

OK Percy wants to debate:

What makes him a man ?

I have no problem with this so go for it Percy.

Yet I will wait for CD to comment before holding the floor with my views as CD seems to want something here and I'd like to know if this is what he is after first.

Let me throw in a limited defence of "effeminates", though not in the sense Timocrat is using.

Sensitive and intelligent men have contributed much to humanity, from cave paintings to poetry to architecture to opera to novels to soft toilet tissue. The advances in medicine alone in the last few hundred years have saved many lives, including pregnant mothers and infants.

just my $.02, carry on