In a recent book on modern manhood Helen Smith writes:

On January 13, 2012, an Italian cruise ship, the Costa Concordia partially sank off the coast of Tuscany with 4,252 people on board. 32 people died and 64 were injured. The captain, Francesco Schettino, was charged with “abandoning incapacitated passengers and failing to inform maritime authorities.” Crew members were not much more help as passengers reported that many of them left them to fend for themselves. Rich Lowry at National Review compared the crash of the Costa Concordia to the Titanic and how men responded in each:

“’Every man for himself” is a phrase associated with the deadly Costa Concordia disaster. An Australian mother and her young daughter have described being pushed aside by hysterical men as they tried to board lifeboats. A grandmother complained, “I was standing by the lifeboats and men, big men, were banging into me and knocking the girls.” If the men of the Titanic had lived to read such a thing, they would have recoiled in shame. The Titanic’s crew surely would have thought the hysterics deserved to be shot on sight—and would have volunteered to perform the service …

Lowry seems to be blaming men for what happened on the Concordia, but he misses the point. The guys’ behavior is a culmination that has been years in the making. Our society, the media, the government, and women, have demanded that any incentives men have for acting like men be taken away and decried masculinity as evil. Now they are seeing the result. Men have been listening to what society has been saying about them for more than forty years; they are perverts, wimps, cowards, jerks, good-for-nothing, bumbling deadbeats and expendable. Men got the message; now they are acting accordingly. As you sow so shall you reap.

The Concordia is just a microcosm of what is happening in our greater society. Men are opting out in response to the attack on their gender. A society can’t spend more than forty years tearing down almost half of the population and expect them to respond with “give me another” forever. The war on men is suicidal for our society and treating men like the enemy is dangerous, both to men and to the society that needs their positive participation as fathers, husbands, role models and leaders.