Respect

The other night, my wife goes to help chaperone a dance for the middle school where my oldest son and daughter are attending. Soon after I put the little kids to bed, they arrive home. After the oldest two brush their teeth and go to bed, I ask my wife how the evening went.

“It went good, they didn’t want any parents go in the dance with them, so they had me stay with these four girls who they didn’t allow into the dance. Their dresses were not modest enough for the standards.”

“Well, it is what it is. They knew what the standards were.” (We spent some time the previous week, making sure my daughter’s dress matched the school’s standards)

This sparked a conversation about a teenage girl’s propensity to use their bodies to get attention, and how some mothers will go right along with it, or even encourage it.

“It is very disrespectful to themselves and their bodies”, my wife goes on. “They treat themselves like a prostitute to get some attention.”

I reply, “It is also disrespectful to the young men, the girls know they have an insane visually centered sex drive at that age. They do it to use the boys for gifts and attention….”

We continued on with that conversation. We discussed how modern society in general has real lack of respect in general. The “Women need a man like a fish needs a bicycle” has been returned. Because the second generation feminism really was centered on a lack of respect toward men, men of today are returning the favor by disrespecting women.

A person who does not respect themselves will not be able to garner respect from others. If someone tattoos their face, they are disrespecting themselves, and will lose respect from others. If a girl dresses up where her T and/or A is hanging out, they are not respecting themselves, nor the people around them.

One of the bigger insults those immodest girls are doing is the insult to her future husbands. She is disrespecting the guy who in ten or fifteen years who will commit his life, his life’s earnings to, and have children with. For some short term sexual attention from some strange men, she is willing to spit in the face of her future man. This goes on later in life, when she decides to have sex with other guys, when she gets those tattoos, when she abuses her body with drugs, alcohol, or overeating, when she develops the habit of using guys for gifts and favors for false promises, when she goes ten years past her prime marriage window, when she becomes crass, rude, and thoughtless of others….the list goes on. No wonder the number of guys willing to scoop up these rude, disrespectful, future hambeasts is dwindling.

I suppose this list can go the other way. If we as men are living life in the fast lane, not taking care of ourselves, not developing our careers, not overcoming our bad habits, et cetera, we are not respecting our future wives. Respect goes both ways.

Otis Redding originally wrote that song “Respect”. He says “I’m about to give you all my money, and all I’m askin’ in return honey is to give me my propers…” Funny how Aretha Franklin’s cover became one of the quintessential songs of second wave feminism. If the feminist movement was about establishing respect for women, they did the exact opposite. By eliminating a women’s respect for men in saying they can do it all (when they can’t) they got the return loss of respect from men. No longer do you have the ”You tip your hat to the lady son”. You have slutwalks, women embarrassing themselves. You have men treating them with no respect. Respect is earned, not deserved.  Also, sometimes it is earned, but not received. If that happens, best to move on to someone who will.