In these latter days, we hear a great deal about "toxic masculinity", and nothing typifies the toxicity of maleness like violence in word and deed. "Violence is never the answer," they say; and, "Violence only breeds more violence."

But this feminizing propaganda is both mistaken and foolish.

It is feminizing because women are bad at violence, and therefore want a world where violence is not necessary. Evolution did not build them for hunting and murder, but for gathering, for childbearing, and for domesticity. They are the vital rearguard support system for the necessary and bloody work of maintaining the tribe's very existence in a hostile world. They used to rely on their men for the violent bits in life, but since they no longer wish to rely on men, they want to pretend that violence is never necessary.

It is mistaken because violence is often the only effective answer to violence. If a serial killer breaks into your house in the middle of the night to rape your wife and slit your throat, you do not respond by offering him a hug and listening to him express his feelings over a cup of hot cocoa. You shoot him (dead, if necessary). There is a place for proportional, justified violence. It is needed to respond to disproportionate, unjustified violence.

It is foolish because a day will come when the violence of men will be needed again.

We live in a comfortable society. We have technology, law, and social order that shield most of us from the relentless hardship of this valley of tears called human life. We lead comfortable lives in which we can ignore those few among us who volunteer to protect our comfort with violence and the threat of violence.

But on that day we will no longer be able to ignore them and the necessity of their violence. After generations of attempting to educate the violence out of our own men, we will either be overjoyed because we failed to do so, or else we will be dead because we succeeded.