I recently read Rich Zubaty's book, What Men Know That Women Don't, an updated version of his 1993 work, Surviving the Feminization of America. This is a good book that every man should read. It is a subversive book that rips the veil off the feminist dictatorship we live under in the West. Indeed, perhaps a better title would be What Men Should Know That Women Would Rather They Didn't. I don't agree with everything he says, and you should understand going in that this is a passionate book-Zubaty is angry and he doesn't mince words. Never mind, read it anyway. .

As the preface by Bill Kauth (co-founder of New Warrior Training) so aptly puts it, "Rich Zubaty barbecues sacred cows for breakfast!" Indeed, Zubaty turns many of late 20th century cultural assumptions on their heads. The most important sacred cow that Zubaty barbecues, in my view, is the notion that women are spiritual and deep feelers, whereas men are crass and materialistic. Just the opposite is the case, argues Zubaty, and I couldn't agree more. This is a revelation to most men, who have had it drummed into them since childhood that they are base and selfish creatures fixated on the physical. Yet such a view of men flies in the face of millennia of tradition and experience.

In some ways, this book is just the opposite of Eve's Seed, which I reviewed here several months ago. Both Zubaty and McIlwain (author of Eve's Seed) agree that the beginning of agricultural societies 8000 years ago was a watershed event that transformed human culture, marking a clear break with the hunter-gatherer cultures that had defined human existence for tens of thousands of years. Both argue that this change had disastrous consequences for humanity. But while McIlwain proposes that the disaster was the rise of oppressive patriarchy and the fall of a gender-equal society, Zubaty sees the calamity as the banishment of the Deep Masculine and the feminization of men and culture. Further, McIlwain sees the Industrial Revolution of the past 300 years as creating-finally-a way back to a gender-equal society, while Zubaty believes that the Industrial Revolution has only made the situation worse, not just for men, but for everyone.

Zubaty is trying to wake men up, to shake them into remembering their masculine heritage: the legacy of spiritual wisdom that used to be passed on from fathers to sons, shared among brothers and given to the community. It is women who are uncomfortable with mystery and the risk of faith. Female instinct values the secure, the predictable, the controllable, the quantifiable. Women are wonderful organizers, and practical. Women domesticate, that is their gift. Men's gift is passion, a willingness to gamble on the Life Force. Men crave freedom, not control. They want transcendence, they want to see God face to face, even if that means their annihilation. Saving their own skins is not high on their list of priorities. Women want religion; men want faith.

The author's solutions are not very helpful, though. In a nutshell, he argues that we must not see male and female as "polar opposites"; but rather as continuum with men and women overlapping each other in various traits. According to McElvaine, the polar opposite concept of the sexes is the root cause of the "male problem": men seeing themselves as "notawoman" (and therefore superior) so as to compensate for their unconscious fear that women really are superior. The result is that men ceaselessly seek to prove the impossible in ways that exaggerate the masculine at the expense of the feminine. In the author's view, we should not speak of the "opposite' sex, but the "somewhat different" sex. He also states the we must realize that men and women have equally essential roles to play in procreation (although the man's is smaller-sorry guys, we'll just have to live with that!). Apparently men just have to surrender. Although the author acknowledges that there is a limit to how far human beings can adapt to changing circumstances, it never occurs to him that perhaps we need to get control of circumstances so that human beings can create an environment conducive to our mental health.

The biggest obstacle to men reclaiming the Deep Masculine is, to adopt Zubaty's style, that men are pussy-whipped. They are too dependent on women for their self-esteem or sense of worth, and thus leave themselves vulnerable to manipulation by women-even well-meaning women. Being so eager to please women (like little boys always seeking Mommy's praise and approval), enslaves men to women, and gives women enormous psychological power over men, which many women are not loath to exploit to their advantage. Withdraw feminine approval (through sexual and other means) and uninitiated men crumble. Uninitiated men-men who have not reconnected to the Deep Masculine-are addicted to women. The result is that most men live out of a feminine mindset. The paradox is that while women strive mightily to tame their men and make them more like themselves (feminine), once they succeed in this project they despise the men they have just tamed. Then they seek another, more masculine, man and start the project all over again.

The reason why men fall into this trap so easily is that men feel on a much deeper level than women. As stated earlier, men's gift (and curse) is passion and intensity. Zubaty reminds us that the more creative, intuitive, feeling human is the male human, not the female. Almost all the great spiritual leaders, the great artists and composers, the great scientists and authors, were men. This has nothing to do with "patriarchal oppression;" this is just how we are made. Women may shed tears more easily, or more readily put words on their feelings, but men's silence or dry eyes says nothing about their depth of feeling or lack of it. Indeed, men often realize that their feelings are too deep for words, or even tears.

Men instinctively-if not consciously-know the existential precariousness of their position. They know in their guts the tragic nature of life, that sorrow is part of being a man. The initiated man lets Life teach him these lessons. Thus he comes to know that God-his Father-sustains him through it all. So he can surrender to the feelings without fear and experience not only the agony of life, but the ecstasy as well. The uninitiated man fears the depth of his feelings, the pain seems overwhelming. So he anesthetizes his soul either by repressing his feelings, or, more often, living them out vicariously through women.

Women seek control, men are drawn to surrender. Men need to surrender to someone or something. It is our nature. But only if we surrender to God, the only being worthy and deserving of a man's surrender, will men be their true selves and a blessing to others. Otherwise they will be enslaved to a false god: money, power, sex, feminine approval, etc.

Adam abdicated his authority and surrendered to Eve. Eve was tempted to eat the forbidden fruit, duped by the serpent into believing that she could be like God through the efforts of her own ego. Eve was just following her feminine instincts: why settle for a little control, when she could control everything through godlike knowledge? Isn't this the same sin of pride that modern civilization is still falling into: all we need is the right technology and all our problems will be solved; human cleverness has a cure for everything. Adam should have known better, for he had the more intimate relationship with God; he had the repository of masculine wisdom: control is an illusion, surrender is the only way. But he was pussy-whipped, he didn't want to alienate Eve, lose her approval and her warm fuzzies. He didn't want to lose his pussy privileges. So he caved in to her and men have been ashamed of themselves ever since.

It is interesting that the Old Testament is full of examples of men who took the leap of faith: Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah and the prophets, Jonah, Daniel and so on. All these men surrendered to God; some more willingly than others. It took until Mary in the New Testament for a woman to trust God enough to reverse Eve's choice, to let go of control. (Don't believe me? Take a look: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Lot's wife, to name a few, preferred to take matters into their own hands, thank you very much.) One of the results of Mary's surrender to God, was that Jesus refused to be a mama's boy. No female reform program for this guy, no sir. While he loved and respected his mother, he wasn't about to let her pre-empt his ministry, even with the best of intentions (See e.g., the Gospel of John, the account of the Wedding Feast of Cana: Mary says to Jesus "They have no more wine." Jesus replies, "Woman, what is that to me?" He does in fact turn water into wine, but he is not about to let his mother call the shots. Anybody who thinks Jesus is a wuss, needs to look at the Gospels again.)

Women are not bad or inferior, but as a group they do need to be knocked off their pedestal. We've let ourselves as men become servants of women's insatiable hunger for material things. A woman's nature is to hoard, to see the glass as half empty. And it's a good thing she does, the well-being of her household depends on it. But we've let this instinct go too far. Shopping has become our religion. More stuff for women! If men had only themselves to worry about, do you think we'd be complicating our lives with all this shit? Think about the typical bachelor pad: not much more than a place to eat, sleep and listen to music. Think about a man's typical concept of an ideal vacation. A trip to Disney World? Hell no! Give him a couple buddies, a shack on a lake in the wilderness and a fishing pole or a bow and arrow. Where he can look at stars, run around naked and pee whenever the urge strikes him.

Men, have you ever overheard women talking to each other? It's either focused on appearances ("That dress is absolutely darling, Mavis!") or their problems ("I can't get Earl to listen to anything I say.") or food ("Try these new fat free vegetarian chocolate donuts I just bought, they're so good!") or gossip ("Did you hear that Doris' daughter's next door neighbor's cat is getting divorced?"). What do men talk about with each other? Work, sports, sex, politics and the meaning of life. The focus is outside themselves. They're not interested in parsing relationships or analyzing their personal problems ad nauseum. Men also have a code of honor regarding private things that women don't seem to adhere to. A man will never casually discuss with his buddies the intimate details of his wife's or lover's body or bedroom behavior. It's considered disloyal and unseemly. Yet, women feel no shame at all in revealing to other women their husband's or boyfriend's sexual virtues or shortcomings. So much for feminine sensitivity. So what's the point? The point is that men are not beasts and women are not angels. We're just different, and it is the height of folly to demonize one sex and idolize the other, or to pretend men and women are really the same.

That is the whole point of Zubaty's book. Men and women are not the same, and the increasing marginalization of the male and the masculine is doing great harm to human society. This is not just a recent phenomenon. The feminist dictatorship of the past 30 years is simply the culmination of a feminizing process that has been going on for a long time. To explain his ideas, Zubaty introduces two other important concepts: meme and manhole. A meme, (a word coined by biologist Richard Dawkins), is the intellectual equivalent of a gene: a self-replicating packet of information. A meme is an idea that grabs hold inside your mind and spurs you to pass the idea on to others. For example, the idea that slavery is wrong is a meme; so is the concept of evolution, or the feminist lie that all men are rapists. Female memes are ideas such as: life is better when it is organized, having more things makes you happier, things/people/life can always be improved. Some male memes are: teamwork, leave well enough alone, men need time away from women. A manhole is a man whose brain is so colonized by female memes that he willingly participates in the feminization of human society and is a stranger to the Deep Masculine. (Male feminists, are one example, but so are corporate executives and government bureaucrats.)

Zubaty goes on to say that men are made, not born; and it takes men to make men out of boys. This is perhaps the single greatest travesty of the agricultural revolution 8000 years ago, that boys are no longer being initiated into manhood by the men. It has gotten so bad in the past century that boys don't even have contact with their fathers any more, let alone the society of men (which now is so fragmented in America as to be non-existent). Real men (as opposed to manholes) are an endangered species due primarily to habitat destruction. That is, there are no longer enough places or the social opportunities for men to gather and immerse themselves in the Deep Masculine. Zubaty argues that unless the spiritual wisdom of the Deep Masculine is allowed to flourish, Western civilization is lost. Feminism will finish off what communism and capitalism started to ruin: men, the family, and the human soul. The way to reverse this trend is not through political organizing or the talk show circuit, but by men reclaiming their true manhood and living out of the Deep Masculine. We come back to the meme: reintroducing male memes back into the meme pool to restore balance.

I will leave you with these words from Rich Zubaty:

In order for a man to survive in the modern world it is imperative that he understand two things:

1) Women do not want what they say they want

2) Women do not know what they want

Women want spiritual leadership out of the prison of themselves. A man must obey his God, a women must obey her man, children must obey their parents. That's the way of the world. I'm not making this up. Men's Rights, Women's Rights, Children's Rights are all a cruel fraud. Our choices are to be willful or to surrender to a higher ideal.

Children need not be obedient to a woman who shows no obedience to her husband. Wives need not be obedient to a man who shows no obedience to God. That is the escape clause in God's law. Men without a spiritual life end up being despised. Yes, despised. Our job is to pray. It has always been. Pray to the Deer God, pray to Allah, pray to the Heavenly Father, pray to rocks and stones. Just pray. That is what our women and children need from us. Just pray.