It will be interesting to see what backlash he gets for this one.
2 thoughts on “Matt Walsh Hits One Out of the Park”
so many very well stated things in this piece.
Notice, I say ‘many’ women. Not all or every or most. Many. I’d estimate the number of women in this category probably mirrors the number of men in the category you describe.
i’m guessing a lot of people will miss this part.
=============
What I mean is, ‘men’ aren’t the problem, Rebecca. It’s you. You’re the one. You’re the common denominator. You’re to blame. There has been one person conspicuously involved in all of Rebecca’s romantic flops, and her name is Rebecca. Maybe you should take a look at her for a change.
“You’re the common denominator.” – priceless.
=============
Here’s the thing, Rebecca: I was always told that if I want to attract a good woman, I have to be a good man. Admittedly, I managed to attract a good woman despite being a horribly flawed and sinful man, but there is still wisdom in this idea even if it doesn’t always hold true. The point is, you have to work on improving yourself if you want to end up with a man who is equally intent on improving himself.
“I managed to attract a good woman despite being a horribly flawed and sinful man…” – so is she, the good woman, also horribly flawed and sinful. when we get that, we can move forward.
===========
We hear all of the handwringing about the decline of masculinity and the disappearance of ‘real men,’ yet very little is ever said about the corresponding deterioration of femininity. It’s strange that you purport to care about ‘manners and chivalry’ yet your email was vulgar and overly aggressive, at times coming across like dialogue out of a middle school boys’ locker room.
yes, it’s true – we all have our different ‘tastes’ in the opposite sex. but line up a few women, and the one who is most feminine will draw the attention of the most men every time … b/c most men are drawn to a feminine woman. that’s not good or bad; it just is. it’s also not wrong. most women want a ‘chivalrous’ man and expect all men to be so, but they don’t think they need to be what most men want – they don’t think it works both ways.
=============
For whatever reason, it’s very popular to scold men and say, ‘women deserve better,’ but nobody ever seems to turn to women and say, ‘men deserve better.’ You spend a lot of time in your email talking about what you deserve and what you want, but have you ever stopped to consider what men deserve and what men want? Love, respect, loyalty, integrity. Did you know that we care about those things, too? Have you provided them in every one of your relationships? Have you woken up each morning and thought ‘what can I do to make the person I love happy today’? Or has it always been ‘what will they do to make me happy today’?
again – it works both ways. but women, in general, aren’t taught that.
============
it’s really hard for me to read things like this sometimes b/c my brain’s knee-jerk reaction is to only pick out the criticism and then to blanketly apply it to myself. as a victim of abuse, my perpetrators taught me it was always all my fault (very normal – perpetrators have to blame someone, and they don’t take responsibility, so they blame their victim). i’ve had to learn, over many years, that it’s just not all about me, it’s not all my fault.
sometimes i look at my first marriage and can only see all the things i did wrong. it takes a lot of prayer and help from wise mentors/leaders/teachers/friends/counselors to see the truth. i am remiss, though, if i swing to the other side and only see everything *he* did wrong and assume i did everything right. i am also remiss if i take responsibility for his choices.
there was a time in therapy where i realized how my behavior could have caused him to want to do some of the things he did. i owned that and shared it with him and asked for forgiveness and worked hard to change that behavior. sadly, he took that as me confessing that I was personally responsible for all of his bad choices, and to my knowledge, he blamed me for the rest of his life.
i have to look at that and choose to see the truth – it’s not the extreme that he chose to believe, but it’s also not the extreme that i’m all good and he was all bad. it’s the truth that we were both fallen people living in a fallen world.
God is good – always God is good, regardless of whether we can see it or not. but one of the ways God has been especially good to me is gifting me with my now-husband. over the 5+ years we’ve been married, i’ve been able to share with him details from my first marriage. he is blunt-honest with me, and i’ve learned tha,t while not perfect, i’m not as bad as my first said i was … and i wasn’t as bad as my first believed i was.
i would guess that one of the reasons Matt didn’t want to write this post is because we women tend to dramatically and extremely respond to things, especially if they emotionally charge us. it’s like he could write, “I say ‘many’ women. Not all or every or most. Many.” in super-bold, super-huge font, and then write the rest in tiny, diminishing font, and we women will read it just the opposite. gotta love us 🙂
still, it is wisdom and maturity from God that cause us to evaluate ourselves, and it is discernment and discretion from God that enable us to weed out what personally applies and what doesn’t.
i glanced through a few of the comments of the post and saw that some women wrote that they, too, were her, and they didn’t know any better, and they had to learn the hard way. that’s how a lot of life is. we live in our humanity and don’t know any better. by the grace and mercy of God, He is willing and able to transform us and make us holy before Him through Jesus Christ.
i think the big thing is not what or where we are, it’s whether or not we’re willing to see and accept the truth and then to deal with it … it’s whether or not we’re willing to own our own choices and accept our own reality, to face it, to apologize when necessary, to repent when necessary, and then to move forward.
When I read her account, I was thinking, “Wow…there are so many angles here!” The most obvious: she SLEPT WITH THE GUY ON THE FIRST DATE AND SHE EXPECTS TO LAND A GOOD MAN??? WTH???
When Matt said, “Notice, I say ‘many’ women. Not all or every or most. Many. I’d estimate the number of women in this category probably mirrors the number of men in the category you describe”, it resonated: for this dynamic to be problematic, it does not require that all or most men (or women) are like that. It only requires a critical mass.
Here’s what happens:
(1) The best picks (both sexes) generally get taken very early.
(2) By the time you get out of college, if you have not found your mate yet, you have a limited window of optimal marriageability. For women, this is huge, because the biological clock hits the 2-minute warning at age 27. That means, if she’s 22 and single and straight out of college, she’s got a 5 year window.
(3) During that time, the men most attractive to them are either married or taken. There are good ones out there, but she’s going to have to go outside her social circles to find them. Ditto for the guys.
(4) Muddying the waters, she’s going to have to filter through the cads, and he will have to filter out the sluts. She will have marginal pressure to “put out” (a big f***thank you to feminism), and he will have marginal pressure to “get laid”. If he gets well into his 20s with no sexual partners, the gals will consider him a social reject. If she gets well into her 20s and has more than 2 partners, she may have a problem finding a good guy.
Most men are not cads or shallow, but a critical mass of them are.
Most women are not sluts or materialists, but a critical mass of them are.
This leaves men and women getting tarred by the sins of that critical mass.
Having said that, “Rebecca” has, though her own actions, severely damaged her own marriageability. The men she dated may or may not be bad guys but it is obvious what kind of gal she is.
so many very well stated things in this piece.
Notice, I say ‘many’ women. Not all or every or most. Many. I’d estimate the number of women in this category probably mirrors the number of men in the category you describe.
i’m guessing a lot of people will miss this part.
=============
What I mean is, ‘men’ aren’t the problem, Rebecca. It’s you. You’re the one. You’re the common denominator. You’re to blame. There has been one person conspicuously involved in all of Rebecca’s romantic flops, and her name is Rebecca. Maybe you should take a look at her for a change.
“You’re the common denominator.” – priceless.
=============
Here’s the thing, Rebecca: I was always told that if I want to attract a good woman, I have to be a good man. Admittedly, I managed to attract a good woman despite being a horribly flawed and sinful man, but there is still wisdom in this idea even if it doesn’t always hold true. The point is, you have to work on improving yourself if you want to end up with a man who is equally intent on improving himself.
“I managed to attract a good woman despite being a horribly flawed and sinful man…” – so is she, the good woman, also horribly flawed and sinful. when we get that, we can move forward.
===========
We hear all of the handwringing about the decline of masculinity and the disappearance of ‘real men,’ yet very little is ever said about the corresponding deterioration of femininity. It’s strange that you purport to care about ‘manners and chivalry’ yet your email was vulgar and overly aggressive, at times coming across like dialogue out of a middle school boys’ locker room.
yes, it’s true – we all have our different ‘tastes’ in the opposite sex. but line up a few women, and the one who is most feminine will draw the attention of the most men every time … b/c most men are drawn to a feminine woman. that’s not good or bad; it just is. it’s also not wrong. most women want a ‘chivalrous’ man and expect all men to be so, but they don’t think they need to be what most men want – they don’t think it works both ways.
=============
For whatever reason, it’s very popular to scold men and say, ‘women deserve better,’ but nobody ever seems to turn to women and say, ‘men deserve better.’ You spend a lot of time in your email talking about what you deserve and what you want, but have you ever stopped to consider what men deserve and what men want? Love, respect, loyalty, integrity. Did you know that we care about those things, too? Have you provided them in every one of your relationships? Have you woken up each morning and thought ‘what can I do to make the person I love happy today’? Or has it always been ‘what will they do to make me happy today’?
again – it works both ways. but women, in general, aren’t taught that.
============
it’s really hard for me to read things like this sometimes b/c my brain’s knee-jerk reaction is to only pick out the criticism and then to blanketly apply it to myself. as a victim of abuse, my perpetrators taught me it was always all my fault (very normal – perpetrators have to blame someone, and they don’t take responsibility, so they blame their victim). i’ve had to learn, over many years, that it’s just not all about me, it’s not all my fault.
sometimes i look at my first marriage and can only see all the things i did wrong. it takes a lot of prayer and help from wise mentors/leaders/teachers/friends/counselors to see the truth. i am remiss, though, if i swing to the other side and only see everything *he* did wrong and assume i did everything right. i am also remiss if i take responsibility for his choices.
there was a time in therapy where i realized how my behavior could have caused him to want to do some of the things he did. i owned that and shared it with him and asked for forgiveness and worked hard to change that behavior. sadly, he took that as me confessing that I was personally responsible for all of his bad choices, and to my knowledge, he blamed me for the rest of his life.
i have to look at that and choose to see the truth – it’s not the extreme that he chose to believe, but it’s also not the extreme that i’m all good and he was all bad. it’s the truth that we were both fallen people living in a fallen world.
God is good – always God is good, regardless of whether we can see it or not. but one of the ways God has been especially good to me is gifting me with my now-husband. over the 5+ years we’ve been married, i’ve been able to share with him details from my first marriage. he is blunt-honest with me, and i’ve learned tha,t while not perfect, i’m not as bad as my first said i was … and i wasn’t as bad as my first believed i was.
i would guess that one of the reasons Matt didn’t want to write this post is because we women tend to dramatically and extremely respond to things, especially if they emotionally charge us. it’s like he could write, “I say ‘many’ women. Not all or every or most. Many.” in super-bold, super-huge font, and then write the rest in tiny, diminishing font, and we women will read it just the opposite. gotta love us 🙂
still, it is wisdom and maturity from God that cause us to evaluate ourselves, and it is discernment and discretion from God that enable us to weed out what personally applies and what doesn’t.
i glanced through a few of the comments of the post and saw that some women wrote that they, too, were her, and they didn’t know any better, and they had to learn the hard way. that’s how a lot of life is. we live in our humanity and don’t know any better. by the grace and mercy of God, He is willing and able to transform us and make us holy before Him through Jesus Christ.
i think the big thing is not what or where we are, it’s whether or not we’re willing to see and accept the truth and then to deal with it … it’s whether or not we’re willing to own our own choices and accept our own reality, to face it, to apologize when necessary, to repent when necessary, and then to move forward.
When I read her account, I was thinking, “Wow…there are so many angles here!” The most obvious: she SLEPT WITH THE GUY ON THE FIRST DATE AND SHE EXPECTS TO LAND A GOOD MAN??? WTH???
When Matt said, “Notice, I say ‘many’ women. Not all or every or most. Many. I’d estimate the number of women in this category probably mirrors the number of men in the category you describe”, it resonated: for this dynamic to be problematic, it does not require that all or most men (or women) are like that. It only requires a critical mass.
Here’s what happens:
(1) The best picks (both sexes) generally get taken very early.
(2) By the time you get out of college, if you have not found your mate yet, you have a limited window of optimal marriageability. For women, this is huge, because the biological clock hits the 2-minute warning at age 27. That means, if she’s 22 and single and straight out of college, she’s got a 5 year window.
(3) During that time, the men most attractive to them are either married or taken. There are good ones out there, but she’s going to have to go outside her social circles to find them. Ditto for the guys.
(4) Muddying the waters, she’s going to have to filter through the cads, and he will have to filter out the sluts. She will have marginal pressure to “put out” (a big
f***thank you to feminism), and he will have marginal pressure to “get laid”. If he gets well into his 20s with no sexual partners, the gals will consider him a social reject. If she gets well into her 20s and has more than 2 partners, she may have a problem finding a good guy.Most men are not cads or shallow, but a critical mass of them are.
Most women are not sluts or materialists, but a critical mass of them are.
This leaves men and women getting tarred by the sins of that critical mass.
Having said that, “Rebecca” has, though her own actions, severely damaged her own marriageability. The men she dated may or may not be bad guys but it is obvious what kind of gal she is.