What most cannot see...

Apparently I've gone all Rip Van Winkle on you all, because I awoke the other day, turned on the TV, and noticed that I can hardly tell the difference between men and women any more. Has political correctness and the desire to assimilate everyone into the same mold completely taken over our lives? And the interesting thing about it is in an effort to somehow distinguish ourselves as individuals we have only succeeded in grouping ourselves even closer than we ever have been. Remember when the man was the guy who took out the trash, mowed the lawn, and stood in front of his family fully prepared to ward off any and all that were dangerous to that family's existence?

For that matter, does anyone remember families? You know, that old and apparently outdated concept of a husband, wife, and kids? Doesn't ring a bell, eh?

It started in the early 80's with names. Recently married women started to eschew the tradition of talking the husband's surname. Susan Rhodes became Susan Rhodes-Washburn, or whatever. Somehow words like "to have and to hold", "in sickness and in health" - words that in essence are about teamwork and togetherness, lose all their meaning when the woman insert's a "me" in the equation.

Then many of the same dip-wads did a similar thing to their female offspring. A couple of people had the idea to change the traditional "Y" at the end of the name Patty to make it now read Patt-i. Ok, I was good with that until the idea evidently spun out of control and we suddenly had 25,345,943 Brandi's and Ashli's running around the country.

After 10 years of the "I" generation (yes, pun intended - absolutely), all the Kathy Thomas-Kincade-Capote-Short-Matthews-Burke-Summer's people went after the boys names, and that's when the emasculation of America's male population began. "Hey dear, I have an idea. Let's take a last name and make it a first name". "We'll be the most unique people in the entire community, and they'll just love us at the soccer fields".

And so the nauseating litany of Connor's, Brandon's, Dylan's, Tyler's, Emery's, and Tanner's was born. Try going to a little league game nowadays and see if you can find a roster that doesn't contain at least 1 Taylor. Good luck. And be sure to say "hi" to his sister Christi...or is that Kristi?

Keeping with the names theory, we now move up to the late 1990's and early 2000's, and the metrosexual period is born. Names - for boys mind you - that have been deemed the most recently popular are as follows: Dakota, Devon, Montana, Bailey, and Thai. All of these names were - to my understanding - 100% girls names just a few years ago. The emasculation rolls onward.

TV has in no small way contributed the last few years, with HGTV, Bravo, Sundance, and a few scattered networks offering any number of shows where the lines of gender are even more bent or at the very least blurred.


New phrases have popped up in the past 25 years, "Dead-beat Dad" being the most prevalent. Now before anyone gets their panty hose in a tangle, I think dead beat dads should be hunted down and forced to pay what they owe. However, the inescapable fact of life is this: There are about 30 million children in this country living without fathers. 80% of all divorces are initiated by the wives, while 90% of all support monies come from the husband. Factor that in with formal complaints in over 22% of divorces where there is joint custody yet the mom keeps the dad away anyways, and you have a recipe for disaster. And here is another little tid-bit for you to chew on: 40% of all males owing child support are delinquent to some degree. 57% of all females who are legally obligated to the same are delinquent, a 17% difference.

Ever hear the term dead-beat Mom? No? I didn't think so.

So what does all of this mean? It means as a society we have systematically downgraded and downplayed the role of men, to the point where we have lost sight of reality. We have argued, fought, and litigated our way into an uncompromising position where it will be all but impossible to turn the train back around. In an effort to attain a necessary balance in the sexes, we have pushed too far and created an imbalance that is bound to confuse and confound our youth of today; youth that will one-day be the leadership of our nation. When we have put petite fashion sense on a level of importance above and beyond concrete values and ideas - simple things like holding the door and saying "Yes sir" or "Yes ma'am", we are providing a pathway to destruction that no terrorist organization could come close to matching.

When the family unit...the cornerstone of our nation for over 230 years...is floundering in a 1 in 3 divorce rate; where unwed celebrity parents are glorified in gossip magazines; where marriage is discussed as a political topic with a baseline principle of IRS Tax rights as opposed to the love of one person for another; and when single moms are considered strong and forthright, while single dads are never spoken about, then we have already lost it as we speak.

And as sure as my name is Gale, you can take that opinion to the bank.