This book should not have to be written, and yet it is needed more than ever. Our culture has robbed men of their sense of worth and has taken the noble aim of manliness away from boys. The collapse of manhood has left our social order in critical condition. It’s time to end the apology tour for traditional masculinity. A generation of young men and boys are being raised in self-loathing, taught that the core of their identity as men is not only abhorrent, but the fountainhead of humanity’s ills.
Civilization rests on the shoulders of men who have done work that the physically weaker sex could not. And though the masculine mystique is about more than physical force, the differences between the sexes—manifold and profound—are all related in some way to that one, the easiest to see and the hardest to deny.
A courageous and penetrating writer, Anthony Esolen shows that restoring men to their proper role makes for happy men and happy women. The manhood he praises does not boast or swagger but appreciates its powers and cultivates its unique talents. It is reluctant to hurt, but it does not cringe or cower in the face of duty.
The feminist who mindlessly asserts that ‘a woman needs a man as a fish needs a bicycle’ takes her comfortable world—including the bicycle—for granted. Her talk of ‘toxic masculinity’ poisons the hearts and minds of the young and risks returning humanity to a barbarous state with more ‘toxic’ men than she could imagine.
No Apologies, with its compelling vision of a strong and effective manhood, reminds us that men have powers as men and how those powers can be used for the common good.
