The sexual holy war is coming for you
by Matthew Crawford, UnHerd:
Our therapeutic state smothers the human spirit.
“Children in their games are wont to submit to rules which they have themselves established, and to punish misdemeanours which they have themselves defined.” Thus did Tocqueville marvel at Americans’ habit of self-government, and the temperament it both required and encouraged from a young age. “The same spirit,” he said, “pervades every act of social life.” The unsupervised games and rituals of children in the 19th century were nicely depicted (with comic exaggeration) in Mark Twain’s novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
In his review of a 1993 book on the history of masculinity by one E. Anthony Rotundo, Christopher Lasch writes that boys “challenged each other to spontaneous feats of daring and agility, acted out stories of heroic adventure and collaborated in the enforcement of an informal code of honour that stressed courage, loyalty and stoic endurance of pain”.
Such patterns of self-directed activity persisted into young adulthood in informal associations such as debate societies. “The clash of wits between friends recalled the physical combat of loyal playfellows in boyhood… mixing affection with attack.” Such associations could serve as a substitute for college. “We educated each other by criticising and laughing at each other,” one informant recalled.
But by the end of the 19th century, such autonomous organisations of young men were fading away. “Education was increasingly confined to the classroom, agonistic rivalry to the playing field. Formal pedagogy replaced spontaneous play and self-culture.”
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