In the struggle against so-called woke values, it is important for Christians to be doctrinally orthodox if they are to succeed. Catholics need to based their action on the social teaching of the Church. This article concerns the views of an evangelical Protestant, Glenn Stanton, who opposes aspects of “woke” culture, but bases himself on very false premises. Indeed, his premises are often close to those of woke society itself. 

By Vinicius

Glenn Stanton’s article, Manhood is not Natural. Why it is in bad Shape and How to Recover it (2018)¹, creates more problems than it solves. It is not a discussion of psychological development into male adulthood, but a sociology based on anti-Christian premises. Some of his practical conclusions collide with traditional views of male adulthood.  

Stanton’s article proclaims, “Manhood is not Natural”. He bases himself on “Margaret Mead [who] was one of the early anthropologists to study the social nature of manhood”. For Stanton’s main source, George Gilder, “manhood is a cultural contrivance”. 

Christianity teaches the exact opposite: manhood, and familiar and political society are developments of nature, not something opposed to it, or “contrivances” invented to “fix” or “control” nature. Manhood and womanhood are quintessentially natural, the Catholic Church teaches; the defective behaviours described in Stanton’s article are, by definition, unnatural.      

The Catholic Encyclopedia² summarises the Catholic attitude (squarely refuting Stanton’s main premise): “It should be emphasized here that man owes his authoritative pre-eminence in society not to personal achievements but to the appointment of the Creator… man as the born leader of the family first exercised this supremacy [over creation] … Woman takes part in this supremacy only indirectly under the guidance of the man and as his helpmeet”. In the Catholic view, therefore, the male’s social position is not a result of social recognition or upbringing (for all their importance, for both sexes), but of God-given nature. 

Discussion

Saint Augustine defined society and government as natural in men, not as something antagonistic to nature and meant to “fix” it: “God… imparted to men some good things adapted to this life, to wit, temporal peace… health and safety and human fellowship, and all things needful for the preservation and recovery of this peace”.³ Scholasticism continued this social teaching brilliantly. 

Modern Magisterium continues the tradition. Pope Leo XIII teaches: “Just as civil society did not create human nature, so neither can it be said to be the author of the good which befits human nature”; “laws by no means derive their origin from civil society… Laws come before men live together in society”.⁴

Catholic social teaching has always opposed philosophies that purport to have society condition or determine nature. It has two reasons for this: firstly, because society is merely a development of nature, and should be determined by nature, which never changes (not the reverse); secondly, because if we accept the premise of society determining nature, “nature” will change, because society is contingent and ever-changing. Both errors dominate Stanton’s worldview and the authors he bases himself on as well as, ironically, the “woke” mindset Stanton rightly dislikes.

Stanton founds his worldview and “science” on three authors – Bronislaw Malinowski (Sex, Culture and Myth, 1962), George Gilder (Men and Marriage 1986), and Margaret Mead (Male and Female, A Study of Sexes in a Changing World, 1949). 

Frontal opposition to Christianity litters these three works, which are quoted throughout Stanton’s article. Malinowski favours contraception, divorce and the “transformation” of marriage, chastising those who want to preserve “obsolete” forms: “Instead of telling us fairytales about what had been once upon a time (Genesis), [anthropology] gives us an insight into the working of human society”.⁵

Malonowski rejects considerations based on natural law or Christianity in favour of anthropology. Mead rejoices in the spread of contraception, abortion rights, “ecumenism”, and the contemporary consideration of “the validity of religious experience triggered by psychedelic drugs”.⁶ Mead believes traditional marriage ought to change and “different sexualities” develop⁷; marriage should not be for life. All this, because society “evolves”.⁸

Mead states that modernity means young men should be taught that dying for the country is wrong and “unfeasible”, and sociology ought to focus more on comparisons with mammals and birds.⁹ Gilder opposes love and marriage (he defines marriage as “submission to female sexuality”) to “spiritual rhythms” and “the sense of dispensability that makes men good fighters, crusaders, good martyrs” – for “social vitality” is “not” sustained by “religious fanaticism”.¹⁰ For Gilder, “Sexual liberals are right that it [the male role] is a cultural contrivance”. All three authors deny absolutely that “manhood” is “inscribed” in nature, whereas Christian teaching from the beginning insists that it is indeed inscribed in nature, and not “a cultural contrivance”.¹¹

This is not an exercise in guilt by association, however. Stanton’s own “science” and beliefs on society and human nature (and even divine nature) mirror these authors and contradict Christianity. Let’s look at Stanton’s beliefs. 

Stanton claims “Womanhood is natural; Manhood is not” (quotes are from his article unless otherwise stated): “A woman’s biological makeup usually ensures she will grow up into a healthy woman. Leave her to herself and she is much more likely than her male peers to move into mature adulthood” “Manhood must be bestowed by a boy’s father and the community’s larger fraternity of men”; “Manhood is not natural. It must be socially constructed”. Stanton cites Gilder: “ ‘The prime fact of life is the sexual superiority of women.’ Because, as we heard from Gilder earlier, ‘Unlike a woman, a male has no civilized role of agenda inscribed in his body’”. 

 Atheist Anthropology

This premise, upon which Stanton’s entire article is based, expresses a view of humanity drawn from atheist anthropology. It reduces human nature to a biological, animal aspect, and opposes it to “society”, which becomes a human artefact designed to “fix” essential nature. But for Christians, society and civilisation develop from human nature, a body/soul composite. It is a contradiction of Christianity to declare that society/civilisation is based on biology, because this ignores mankind’s rational, ensouled nature, which alone makes civilisation possible. It makes even less sense from a Christian point of view to base civilisation exclusively on female biology. Stanton’s view of human society and the family is closely modeled on the animal world, whose rites of “domestic” courtship never arrive at civilisation precisely because this is not a product of biology per se. Stanton makes much of gender and nurturing, but misses the point that animals have genders and share women’s nurturing tendency, but don’t produce civilisation. In fact, Stanton’s “feminist” ideology does no favours to women.

God’s “defective” creation

For Stanton considers created human nature per se as flawed: “In its essence [my emphasis], male sexuality is deeply anti-social. It has no civilizing, pro-social nature in itself, it must be acted upon by other forces, primarily strongly enforced female and societal expectations”; “Female sexuality has the power to create and maintain human civilization by moderating the behaviour of men”. This is a classic reiteration of the social supremacist philosophies condemned by the Church. For Christianity, the very purpose of society is to serve and assist what is “inscribed” in human nature’s “essence”. That is why natural law is so important for the Church, yet unmentioned by Straton and his sources. This alone makes his theories on society and human nature erroneous from a Christian point of view. Stanton’s theories come entirely from contemporary, anti-Christian anthropology. For Christianity, civilisation and political society are the result of ensouled rationability in first place. Neither Stanton’s article nor the authors he mentions discuss the soul, unlike Christian anthropology, for which the soul is as much a part of human nature as the body.

If Stanton meant to argue that contemporary deficiencies of manliness are the result of original sin exacerbated by “modernity”, that would make sense from a Christian point of view. But in that case, what he would be referring to is anything but “male sexuality” “in its essence” (which is part of the human nature God made, which is “essentially” good). Nor would he have any reason to distinguish male sexuality unfavourably from “female sexuality”, which is now likewise affected by original sin. But he doesn’t do this. He insists that male “nature” per se is defective and inferior to female nature. This would make God the author of evil by creating human nature.

Stanton adopts an unscientific bias against males (one based upon bizarre philosophical notions, below).  Stanton claims that male nature tends to be more extreme, either very good or very bad, while female nature “exist[s] reliably at or near the median scale of human behaviour”. Then, to illustrate this, he confuses morality with the merely different psychological makeup of each sex. Stanton’s generalisation is difficult to reconcile with infanticide and abortion, which have been practiced by a significant minority of women throughout history despite its premeditated violence and destructiveness. Perhaps it could be said that, as with the great good that women do, their unethical actions are also less visible than those of men. Christianity does not justify any sexually based moral bias. Stanton’s moral “feminism” is bizarre.      

Stanton is a behaviouralist, believing that society and environment will “fix” essential nature, by determining what each individual will do (rather than being a good influence, as Christianity teaches), like a house-trained pet without reason. Behaviouralists do in fact believe men are just more developed animals, and rush to remote tribal societies for “proof” of what is “natural” in humans. But for Christianity, after original sin, the flaws observed in male (and female) sexual behaviour are not “natural”. For Christianity, the alternative template to these flaws is nature and its law, which men now need grace and the Church to be able to properly conform to. 

Stanton’s doctrine that “nature” is biological/animal, while society is “unnatural”

For Christianity, civilisation and society is inherent in human nature. As Pope Leo’s Encyclical Libertas stated, its laws predate society, precisely because they are inscribed in nature. But Stanton and his anthropologists insist they were developed by trial and error over eons, in the most animalistic conditions, and can still change. For Christianity, civilisation is not the product of the feminine gender, or “submission to female sexuality”. Instead, both sexes are naturally adapted for roles in which they both require plenty of formation to fulfil properly.

The Catholic Encyclopedia cites Pope Leo XIII’s Encyclical, Arcanum, “The husband is ruler of the family and the head of the wife”. Arcanum says nothing about submission to female sexuality being the foundation of marriage.

Because Stanton believes society determines humans, he confuses manhood per se (which develops from unchanging nature) with manhood as social status. But “status” constantly changes, along with society. Stanton refers to a ship’s captain losing his manhood “forever” because of an act of cowardice. Indeed, the captain’s self-esteem and social reputation might suffer irreparable damage, compromising his status, but Christianity holds that men have free will and are not socially determined. Such a man remains capable (if not too likely) of performing an act of heroism almost immediately, or in the future. What is considered manly by society can also change, as in the contemporary West.

Natural manliness often needs to be affirmed against social convention. Martyrdom is a great example of manliness for Christianity, yet generally involved the loss of all social status, including manhood and even personhood. Not surprisingly, Stanton’s main source, Gilder, disparages martyrs, saying that it is social “dispensability that makes young men good fighters, good crusaders, good martyrs” but this “also weakens the male ability to care deeply and long” and “their sense of the preciousness of human beings”.¹² This is an incredible misunderstanding of Christianity, civilisation and manhood itself. Indeed, two things which are essential to our Western Christian civilisation, the soldier and the priesthood, are not discussed by Straton. 

Stanton’s insistence on manhood being socially constructed follows from his even more radically anti-Christian notion of personhood itself being a social construct

Stanton asserts, “You require a Me to become a You…. There are no true individual persons. Our humanity is founded on our need and desire to relate to other persons”.¹³ This radically unchristian notion has become central to conservative ideology (Roger Scruton championed it). Stanton bases it on the modern non-Christian philosopher, Martin Buber, and also quotes the philosopher John Macmurray, “It is only in relation to others that we exist as person”.¹⁴

But for the Christian religion, this is entirely false; society is a necessary part of human development, but the human is a person by virtue of his ensouled nature; the unborn and the comatose are persons in full right, though they interact with nobody. Society can never confer or take away personhood. Obviously full human development requires society. But the individual exists for all eternity as the body/soul composite in his own right. Adam, as created, was fully human (which Stanton denies)¹⁵; a man, if a lonely one. 

G. K. Chesterton makes the point that real, distinct persons existing in their own right are what makes love possible: “that there are no real walls of individuality between man and man… I never heard of any suggestion in my life with which I more violently disagree… [only] If souls are separate love is possible… If the world is full of real selves, they can be really unselfish selves”;¹⁶ “Love desires personality; therefore love desires division”, “according to orthodox Christianity this separation between God and man is sacred, because this is eternal. That a man may love God it is necessary that there should be not only a God to be loved, but a man to love him”.¹⁷

Indeed, Augustine saw the first sin as social, resulting from Adam’s love and sense of obligation to Eve taking precedence over an obligation that came from beyond “social consensus”.¹⁸ Humanity’s natural feeling for social obligation and conventions stimulated the old West to make supra-social principles the ultimate criteria. For Christianity, among humans only the self, the individual body/soul composite, and not society (even marriage is not eternal), is immortal and its existence is not determined by society.¹⁹ The individual person is ultimately responsible for his decisions. 

Mankind’s “savage” origins. Stanton’s primitivist anthropological definition of marriage

Following Mead, Stanton assumes that the original state of mankind, in “nature”, was “savagery” and “anarchy”: Women produced marriage and “civilisation” after endless social “experimentation”. For Stanton, women still “wed men”, not vice versa, thereby permitting men to take part in “society”. Stanton’s article attempts to find proof of this in etymology and “biological” anthropology, rather than in Christianity or natural law. Chesterton explained the contrasting Christian view: “The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature [the world outside humanity] is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate”.²⁰ Bizarrely, while confusing human and non-human nature, Stanton has difficulty recognising what belongs to human nature per se:

Stanton asserts (following Gilder, for whom the woman marries the man, not the reverse, Men and Marriage, 1986), “The husband settles down and confines himself to a particular household [which notionally pre-exists, because it is the “woman’s fiat” that “permits” him to be known as the father]: “In the state of nature, his paternity is established by her fiat”. This confuses the state of nature with primitive or even animal society, following modern anthropology. Stanton calls this “the principle of legitimisation”. He cites Malinowski’s argument that paternity is important merely a means of achieving integration of the child into society at large, revealing the social determinism of Stanton’s worldview. His reliance on Malinowski’s work is important. 

Malinowski does not pretend to present a Christian view of humanity. In fact, he asserts that it is the role of “anthropology” to “interpret” Christianity!: “[anthropology is] the ablest interpreter of all the documents of human history and culture”.²¹ Malinowski attacks the idea that marriage is based on nature, and abhors the patriarchal family: “This simple doctrine, the Adam and Eve theory of primitive marriage, as we might call it, was based on authority … on belief and moral prejudice… Anthropology, therefore, was doomed to modify if not explode this theory”.²²

For Malinowski, the “Original state” was “promiscuity”, women are sex slaves. But “women, by nature morally stronger than the male sex, revolted”, establishing marriage, “and by doing so, introduced law, order and morality”.²³ He says this view was a reaction to the “Adam and Eve anthropology [which] had to be exploded”, and that the truth might be somewhere “between” the two. Malinowski thinks some kind of marriage and family is essential to human life, but also that its form (whether monogamous or permanent), and sexual mores in general, are something to be determined by each culture, precisely because such things are not “natural” but are social artefacts.  

Likewise, Stanton’s main source, Gilder, asserts that “husband and father in a durable marriage” is a “cultural invention” not based on nature.²⁴ Gilder also maintains that pregnancy, childbirth, suckling and nurturing, are female “sexual” acts that make the male’s role (“copulation”, his “only” interest) comparatively insignificant and socially meaningless, naturally speaking.²⁵ All the behaviours that produce the family and eventually civilisation, are therefore the product of the “natural” woman “domesticating” the “natural” man; “The female responsibility for civilisation cannot be granted or assigned to men”, because it is biologically-based.²⁶ Stanton’s article lifts this thesis straight from Gilder. 

But these caricatures of what is “natural” in men and women oppose the Christian view of nature. For the Church, man’s reason being in control (manliness by definition) is quintessentially natural. There was no “toxic masculinity” or adolescent-style inertia (let alone the anarchy posited by Stanton/Gilder) in the theoretical state of nature envisaged speculatively by St. Thomas Aquinas (i.e., nature minus the preternatural gifts of the state of justice, a state which has never existed, of course)²⁷. For the Church, even after original sin, the family, political society and civilisation remain implicit in nature (per se). It is true that society and formation are necessary for full individual development and maturity, but this is equally true for both men and women. 

Gender-bending in Stanton’s anthropology

Despite his opposition to some “woke” ideas on gender, Stanton takes Margaret Mead’s lead (Mead focuses on “womb-envy” among men, expressed in males ritualistically “giving birth” in tribal societies in New Guinea)²⁸ and advocates the merging of gender roles in “nurturing” babies, something not to be found in traditional societies. Stanton relies²⁹ on Kyle Pruett (The Nurturing Father, 1987), who rejoices in the social changes breaking down the traditional family and parenting roles: “What is destructive is the archaic… assign[ation] to a human being of the male gender exclusively male gender roles forever”.³⁰

Pruett asserts that fathers taking up nurturing roles is inevitable because of women entering the workforce, divorce, and contraception. Pruett believes contraception makes both fathers and mothers parents by “choice”, and therefore “better nurturers”. Pruett praises the “softening of sexual stereotyping” resulting from Feminism; this “softening” was “largely sponsored, if not canonised, by the women’s movement of the last twenty years”.³¹  Pruett blurs male and female roles, arguing for much more than the need for fathers to take an active role in their sons’ unspringing.

Stanton supports Pruett’s definition of the “nurturing father” as fully and habitually (even as “primary” nurturer) involved in feeding, changing nappies etc. Yet this behaviour has never been regarded as men’s typical occupation in any culture. Saint Joseph would have been regarded with ridicule if he had habitually engaged in such nurturing. Pruett is unable³² to provide any proof whatsoever that the primary nurturing of babies by men has existed in any society. The father showing his love for babies (I can speak firsthand of the Mediterranean culture where this is traditionally very demonstrative) and the father nurturing babies, are two different things. 

A gendered creation by a gendered or female God?

Stanton provides perhaps the most heterodox basis for his theories in his book, Secure Daughters. Confident Sons (2011). He introduces a heterodox definition of mankind’s creation in the image of God, basing himself on the atheist American physician, Leon Kass. Stanton claims that the “image of God” referred to in Genesis is only humanity’s sexual duality, asserting that man was not made in God’s image until woman was created. He also asserts that this is how man is distinguished from the rest of creation (which is nonsensical, because sexual duality exists in animals): “It is our gendered humanity that images God”, “Man and woman are different… because of this deeply divine distinction—a distinction that shows us something important about the nature of God”; “This first human truth that we are either male or female is a central part of the divine story”. ³³

By confusing Genesis’ description of man’s creation in the image of God (which is understood by Christianity to refer to his ensouled rationality) with its subsequent description of mankind as male and female, Stanton makes sexual duality a characteristic of God, and perhaps infers even more than that: “[femininity] ‘images’, or reflects, God in the world like nothing else can”.³⁴ This is not Christian or even theistic. It attributes a Yin Yang dualism to God that is nowhere to be found in Christianity. It’s true that traditional theologians have seen an analogy of the Trinity in the variety of things, in the hierarchy of human society, and the family, but they have never attributed a gendered duality to God. This is a silly modern tendency that is hardly original. The more serious danger of Stanton’s heterodox view is that, if this duality is intrinsic to God, and creation becomes, as Stanton asserts, “necessary” (rather than gratuitous, as Christians believe) and in the manner in which it took place, then the distinction between God and creation becomes blurred. This leads to pantheism and a host of fashionable errors. Stanton tries to find a basis for his view that the feminine is a “necessary” divinely intrinsic consequence in Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, but fails even in this.   

Stanton tries to address a problem which is real enough, the compromising of manliness in contemporary Western societies. He makes numerous commonsense observations on behavioural issues among modern men. His desire to oppose social trends like the erosion of gender distinctions has merit, but his premises are anti-Christian. Because he portrays his views as Christian, his worldview and his article (which express those premises), are dangerous for Christians, especially the young.

By Vinicius. Vinicius is a Melbourne-based historian-researcher  focussing on early modernity as the Christian Western alternative to ideological, Enlightenment modernity.  

ENDNOTES

1. https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=32-03-026-f ↩︎
2. A. Rössler, W. Fanning, W. (1912). Woman, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert Appleton, New York 1912. ↩︎
3. St. Augustine, The City of God  XIX, 13. ↩︎
4. Leo XIII, Libertas, 1888, 8, 9. ↩︎
5. Bronislaw Malinowski, Sex, Culture and Myth, Harcourt, New York 1962, p. 88. ↩︎
6. Margaret Mead, Male and Female, a Study of the Sexes in a Changing World, M. Morrow, New York 1949, pp ix-x. ↩︎
7. Mead, Male and Female, pp. xxi-xxiv. ↩︎
8. Mead, Male and female, p. 355. ↩︎
9. Mead, Male and Female, pp. xxvi, xix. ↩︎
10. George Gilder, Men and Marriage, Pelican, Gretna 1986, pp. 16,17. ↩︎
11. Gilder, Men and Marriage, p. 45. ↩︎
12. Gilder, Men and Marriage, p. 16. ↩︎
13. Glenn Stanton, The Family Project. How God’s design reveals his best for you. Carol Stream, Illinois 2014, p. 93. ↩︎
14. Glenn Stanton, The Family Project. Ibid. ↩︎
15. Stanton, The Family Project, p. 92. ↩︎
16. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Lane, New York 1909, p. 242. ↩︎
17. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Lane, New York 1909, pp. 243, 244. ↩︎
18. Augustine, The City of God, 14:11. ↩︎
19. Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, 1937. ↩︎
20. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, p. 295. ↩︎
21. Malinowski, Sex, Culture and Myth, p. 275. ↩︎
22. Malinowski, Sex, Culture and Myth, p. 92. ↩︎
23. Malinowski, Sex, Culture and Myth, p. 93. ↩︎
24. Gilder, Men and Marriage, p. 9. ↩︎
25. Gilder, Ibid. ↩︎
26. Gilder, Men and Marriage, p. 13. ↩︎
27. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I – II Q 85, arts. 1, 3; ST Q. 82, art. 1; Reginald Garrigou Lagrange O.P., Grace. Commentary on the Summa Theologica of St Thomas Aquinas, Herder Book, London 12952, p. 504.  (Fr. Henri de Lubac , who came into his own at Vatican II, championed the contrary viewpoint, arguing that the notional state of pure nature and that of fallen nature are the same thing and that original sin was only a pure privation of the preternatural gifts of the state of justice. Prior to de Lubac, as the DTC (Dictionnaire de theologie catholique) documented, agreeing with Lagrange, the majority of thomists reject the notion of original sin as a pure privation of the preternatural gifts). ↩︎
28. Mead, Male and Female, p. 103. ↩︎
29. Glenn Stanton, Focus on the Family, 2004, https://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/the-involved-father/ ↩︎
30. Kyle Pruett, The Nurturing Father, Warner Books, New York 1987, p. 226. ↩︎
31. Pruett, The Nurturing Father, p. 15. ↩︎
32. Pruett, The Nurturing Father, Chapter 2. ↩︎
33. Glenn Stanton, Secure Daughters. Confident Sons, 2011, p. 9.  https://waterbrookmultnomah.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/SneakPeek_SecureDaughtersConfidentSons.pdf ↩︎
34. Glenn Stanton, Secure Daughters. Confident Sons, ibid. ↩︎