On Being Served Last
A Short Reflection on Manhood in the Modern Era
I was listening to an interview recently in which the following definition was given for a certain type of narcissism: if you were on the Titanic, you would think that you should have been first in line for the lifeboats, because your life is more important than other people’s and more worthy of saving.
This really struck me because it made me recognize something I've always believed but rarely spent much time thinking about. My immediate reaction was that I should be last in line, or close to last (which would, of course, have been a death sentence). Not because my life is necessarily any less worthy than other people - I enjoy living, have plans for the future, have close friends and family, etc. - but because I thought it was just understood that men without wives and children were supposed to be the last to be saved and the first to die. Indeed, I would say that's part of the definition of being a man.
For all the talk about chivalry being an outdated code designed to exploit and oppress women, the poorest women on the Titanic had better survival rates than the richest men. Women and children, even poor women without close friends and family, were given priority.
I don't know how old I was when I understood that this is how it should be, but I was so young I have no recollection of ever having considered the possibility that the world should be any other way. I knew that when I grew up, I would be one of the ones who had to stay behind when other people were being saved by lifeboats, that it would be my duty to let others lives and needs take precedence over mine.
It seemed obvious to me. Of course men were expected to be ready to lay down their lives before women and children. Of course men without families were expected to sacrifice before fathers of young children. Of course prime-age men were expected to give up their lives before the sick or infirm. Men are expected to do the difficult tasks, and the dirty tasks, and not to complain about it. Even in our supposedly more egalitarian era, in almost every mass shooting, there are men and teenage boys who throw their bodies over women, children, and teenage girls to shield them from bullets. The opposite never happens.
Recently, my church had a party for Pentecost. As everyone was lining up for food, I waited. The children required holding back by their parents to prevent a stampede. A long line formed. Eventually, someone called order and announced the rules for the line: seniors would be first, followed by young children and accompanying parents. Families with older children could go later. And then everyone else. Naturally, as a young, single guy, I was near the back. This was as it should be. There is something natural and logical about that order (including about putting the elderly before the anxious children).
Increasingly, it seems as though our society has lost some of that understanding of what is natural and right. There are those who question the idea that there is any difference between men and women. They claim it's chauvinistic to treat men differently. Even when men are asked to take the shorter end of the stick.
But on the other side, there are the men who make a great noise about how life has been unfair to them. They complain about the way society treated boys in recent decades. They point to the rhetoric demeaning males and blaming men alive today for all of the bad things that happened to women in the past. They decry Hollywood's depiction of men as toxic or weak.
I agree with these criticisms. Growing up, I never heard a single adult say that boys were smarter than girls. I routinely heard teachers and other authority figures say that girls were smarter than boys, and better behaved, more mature, etc. Feminism did take a turn for the worse sometime before I was born. The pendulum had already swung too far a long time ago, in the same way that wokeness went dramatically too far in overcorrecting for the discrimination faced by minorities in the past.
But the problem with many young men today is that they have internalized the message from the left that there are no differences between men and women, and they have decided that if that's the case they want special advantages, too. They haven't been raised, as I was, to understand that because men and women are different, they will have different burdens in life. It is inequitable that men can be drafted and not women. And that's the way it should be. Life isn't fair and it isn't supposed to be fair.
Some of the grievances held by young men are legitimate. Some of the unfairness men have faced has been unfortunate and should be remedied. The same is true for any group which has been given a bad lot. And many groups have suffered more than young men.
But after decades of correctly lampooning the left for celebrating victimhood, the right has now embraced victimhood, too. And it's just as much of a problem when young white guys wallow in being victims as it was when anyone else did. The problem isn't that some people don't have legitimate grievances. It's that you have to learn to deal with the way the world is, not waste your time complaining that it isn't the way you wish it was.
I realize, too, that it's easy for me to say this. I've had an easier lot in life than many young men. As Richard Reeves has documented, the problems facing young men aren't evenly distributed. The young men who are falling behind are generally not from middle-class families. It was easy for me to laugh off the derogatory comments from teachers about boys being stupid (even as I thought then, and think now, that it was a problem they were making those comments). I usually had better grades than all of the girls in the class, with occasionally one or two exceptions.
In recent years, I've thought more about how those comments must have felt to the boys who sat in the back and struggled in school. But I still don't think the answer is for them to embrace victimhood, nor to assume that women or society owe them anything.
Society still needs men to be more expendable than women and children. It always will. My least libertarian position is probably on the draft: I think that in times of war it is the duty of male citizens to fight and die for their country, regardless of whether or not they want to serve. I don't believe any such duty exists, or ever will exist, for women.
If anything, I think that because I had advantages in life other people didn't, that means that I should be expected to bear a greater burden, should a burden need to be borne, than should other men who didn't have those advantages. But that is beside the point. The point is that part of the solution to the problems we find ourselves in today has to be young men embracing the understanding that they are called upon by virtue of their sex to bear some of the unfairness of life. That doesn't mean unfairness should never be set right. It doesn't mean all unfairness is good. But it does mean that - even after the sexual revolution and third wave feminism, and even considering the troubles which have been heaped disproportionately on some young men - men still have to eat last. And we still have to be willing to die first. And above all, we shouldn’t complain about our misfortunes - whatever they happen to be - especially when there are others who have suffered as much or more than we have.