Kerby Anderson
A very important book written by Nancy Pearcey came out this week. The Toxic War on Masculinity is well researched and full of surprises. The first surprise is the claim that there is good news about Christian men.
The standard response from both the secular and Christian media is that biblical teachings about such topics as headship in marriage make Christian men more likely to commit abuse and pose major difficulties in a marriage. The problem with the social science research in the past is that it failed to identify two distinct groups of men: religiously devout vs. nominal evangelicals.
The first group (who attend church regularly) shatter the negative stereotypes. They are more loving to their wives and more emotionally engaged with their children than any other group in America. They are less likely to divorce and the least likely to commit domestic violence.
By contrast, the nominal Christian family men do fit the negative stereotype. They spend less time with their children. Their wives report significantly lower levels of happiness. And they are 20 percent more likely to divorce than secular men. Sociologist Brad Wilcox reports, “The most violent husbands in America are nominal Evangelical Protestants who attend church infrequently or not at all.”
Nancy Pearcey has a few suppositions for this difference. She observes that “nominal men hang around the fringes of the Christian world just enough to learn the language of headship and submission but not enough to learn the biblical meaning of those terms.” She believes they “cherry-pick verses from the Bible and read them through a grid of male superiority and entitlement that they have absorbed from the secular guy code for the Real Man.”
This is just one of the many insights you will discover in her new book on The Toxic War on Masculinity.

Kerby Anderson
Nearly half the state legislatures have passed laws requiring that only females can participate in girls’ and women’s sports. Some of these laws are being challenged in court along with court challenges in states that allow biological males to compete with biological females.
Gregory Brown is an exercise physiologist who documents the biological differences between men and women in sports. Many biological factors influence human performance, but “one of the most important factors that influences adaptations to training and performance in sports is sex, because sex influences every system and every cell in our body.”
A fair comparison between male and female differences in anatomy and physiology give males athletic advantages when compared to gifted and trained females of the same age. It is also true that puberty magnifies those sex-based differences. He lists those increased percentages in his article, and they are significant.
He also addresses the argument that hormone therapy decreases the biological advantages. For example, men have 30-60 percent higher muscle strength than women. Even after “undergoing testosterone suppression” the decrease in strength is less then 9 percent.
Sure, some women are taller than some men. Some women can run faster than some men. But the tallest women are shorter than the tallest men. The fastest men are faster than the fastest women. A blood test or a genetic test cannot determine a transgender identity. Biological sex is still present, and it is logical to assume the inherent male athletic advantages are still present.
This is the science that lawmakers, judges, coaches, and parents must accept. There are clear differences between men and women when competing in sports.