I just spent nine hours in an emergency room for an ice-related injury (not me) and returned to find the themes of wussification and the problems of modern society for young men permeating my email and daily reading.  Some additional percentage of the content was filled with statements related to a local controversy about respect for women.

For some reason, it brought my mind back to a month-and-a-half period (though it felt much longer) in my early 30s.  For 40 hours a week, I was one of two or three men smashing inch-thick plaster off of heavy-gauge steel mesh, which we then tore off of the century-old wood framing.

When the floor was a blizzard-dropping of dust, we would cart it all up a flight of stairs to dumpsters.  The first , we filled above the halfway mark, and it literally lifted the truck off the ground when the waste-management guy came to retrieve it.  (As I recall, we hung off the front of the truck to tip the balance.)

It sucked.  It felt like penance for all of the ills that I’d ever done or wished on anyone.  Some among my coworkers swore and quit the job.  I stayed on because it was the only way I could find, at the time, to support my wife and two daughters.

We’ve entered into a frightening era, it seems to me, during which “respect for women” means transforming them into risk-free targets for promiscuous men and we’ve created a boy problem by wringing our hands when they don’t respond to stimuli like little girls.

Those for whom improvement means tearing down may succeed in destroying our civilization, but I’ll count it a small victory when I spit bloody lung on the white coat of a government-paid doctor as I tell him I’m going to go die in the home that I built, thank you very much.