Where are the Men in all of this?

I have chosen to stay quiet up to this point about the Miley Cyrus debacle.  Mostly because I don't watch VMAs, or any reward shows actually, and I didn't Google the performance the next day.  I didn't want to see it.  I didn't want to watch the depravity.  Just reading the hundreds of posts about it in the days following it  were enough.  I got the picture.

I am not going to comment about where Billy Ray went wrong or didn't go wrong, or how he tried to raise a child star.  I don't know them, I don't know his parenting style.  Why did I decide to write now?  Because I read a blog post discussing the saddest part of the equation to me.  The man's side.

 

Please read this:  http://themattwalshblog.com/2013/08/28/dear-son-dont-let-robin-thicke-be-a-lesson-to-you/.

 

I wholeheartedly agree with Matt Walsh, when he says, "Where are the men in all of this?"

 

Why is everyone crying out against Miley (aka Smiley, aka Destiny Hope) and not mentioning Robin Thicke (who until the VMA atrocity I had never heard of)?  Why are we shocked and judging the 20 year old girl who barely knows how to conduct herself as an adult and just chalking the behavior of a 30-something man to just being a guy?  And WHY is it acceptable for him to act like that?

 

People far more intelligent than I have researched this and written about this and have given opinions about this. 

 

This is what I know.  We live in a broken world.  A world with broken dreams, broken families, broken promises, and broken lives.  People survive the way they know how.  If they cannot find fulfillment in the relationships they have or within themselves, they search for what can give them the feeling of completeness.  For some, food fills the void, for some it might be drugs or alcohol.  For many it is power and for many it is sex.  And for still many it is both power and sex.  {Let me just say, you will not find fulfillment or completeness without God.}

 

We try to teach our girls to be "good" girls, but allow them to wear shorts that are too short, skirts that leave nothing to the imagination, or shirts that are too tight.  We bombard them with half naked, way too thin women posing in erotic poses and they begin to believe they must look and act like that for boys to like them.  Our first problem is making them believe that they have to have a boyfriend.  We need to raise our girls to believe they have to have God.  We need to stop the sexual objectification of our girls, including the celebrity girls {and women}. 

 

How do we do this?  I don't have the answer.  I do believe it starts with persistent prayer to God to change our hearts and our minds; to teach our boys when they are little to not treat girls as objects; to not allow them to view anything that is of sexual nature; to not allow them to be immodest themselves; to teach them Godly values and to see others as God sees them.  Until we raise up Godly men of Godly character, our girls will be in constant danger of believing they have to live up to societal expectations and constant exploitation. 

 

Don't get me wrong, I am NOT saying men are completely to blame.  I am not being sexist here.  I am simply saying that we need to teach our boys to be respectful, loyal, faithful, loving, honest, strong, and full of integrity.  We need to teach our girls to be the same.  We need to build their foundations on the Rock, so that no matter what comes their way, they can withstand it.  

 

When we stop giving our kiddos the permission to act out and behave certain ways, when we stop saying "he is just being a guy" or "she is just expressing herself", when we start telling them no, then we can prevent scenes such as the VMAs.  Little girls like Destiny wouldn't have to grow up to display such obnoxious behavior to get attention and feel some self-worth.  It isn't about wanting to be raunchy.  It is about wanting to feel like you matter. 

 

While I am not a fan of Miley Cyrus, before today or now, my heart breaks for her.  That she so desired attention that she felt the best way to get it was to sexually exploit herself.  That she lives in a world that objectifies, exploits, and judges girls based on sexuality.  That while she isn't innocent in this, she is being treated like a monster, yet an adult married man with children can "enjoy" what she did and our society sees nothing wrong in what he did.  Her behavior was pornographic without a doubt.  If we as a society didn't crave it, didn't desire it, didn't ask for it, there wouldn't be a demand for it.

 

So before you judge Destiny for her behavior - please consider this.  Until we fix the problem - until we teach our boys to respect women and we teach our girls to respect themselves - until we stop exploiting women for sexual purposes...this will continue.  We can't really wait for our littles to grow up though, we need our men of character and integrity to rise up now and protect our women and our children.  We need grown men to act like grown men.  We need married men to remember their vows and love only their wives.  We need fathers to be role models for their kiddos.  We need men!

Where are the men in all of this?