Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan recently wrote a piece titled “America Needs More Gentlemen” in which she lamented the loss of gentlemen in light of the #MeToo movement:

All the stories we’ve read the past few months about predators — not those accused of rape and sexual assault, which are crimes, but of general piggishness, grabbiness, manipulation and power games — have a common thread. The men involved were not gentlemen. They acted as if they’d never heard of the concept. We have lost track of it. In the past 40 years, in the movement for full equality, we threw it over the side. But we should rescue that old and helpful way of being. The whole culture, especially women, needs The Gentleman back.

The gentleman is “an encourager of women,” she says. He recognizes their shared dignity, and he treats them with respect, “not because they are weak but because they deserve friendship.”

This might be old-fashioned, Noonan says, but a gentleman remains a gentleman no matter how the world has changed.

Yes, a man should be a gentleman no matter what. But the fact is the world has changed in an alarming way that directly impacts how the sexes interact with each other. The result is an unraveling of civility.

The cause of this must be placed directly at the feet of women themselves.

The sexual revolution brought us a second, third, and fourth wave of feminism that quickly devolved from the lofty goals of those who fought for equal rights to the gutter where women act just like men.

The legitimate goal of equality in law and in areas of social life where women share the same talents and abilities with men morphed into a woman being ontologically like a man — psychologically, sexually, and physically.

As a result, men look across the aisle and see a distorted reflection of themselves. This is becoming particularly true in the bedroom as men find themselves with women who emulate masculine sexuality and thereby emasculate the man. Men probably don’t complain or even realize how destructive this is, but it has a negative effect on the balance of the sexes and the venerable connection between the masculine and feminine. The feminine has become woefully absent.

Paula Kamen, in her book Her Way: Young Women Remake the Sexual Revolution, honestly describes how women have become “superrats,” a term she proudly embraces:

Because they now think more like men and share more of their power, women are also more likely to act like men in bed, that is, to take control and actively seek pleasure. Although this movement has been slow and has only just begun, women are more willing to take responsibility for sex, initiate it, and take an active part in directing and choosing specific sexual activities, such as a wider variety of acts, including oral and anal sex and experiments with other women. “In college, before I had a boyfriend, I was what you would say promiscuous,” said Shelly, 24, a Miami high school teacher with a soft Georgia accent. “I would have more casual relationships. Like I didn’t want a boyfriend and I had a couple of different guys for two and a half years that I hung out with. And neither one of us wanted a commitment or anything.” Like the other women that I interviewed, Shelly has had a sex life that is far from traditionally female. Actually, it is better described as traditionally male.

The “evolutionary” changes in women’s behavior toward men that Kamen documented in her book “involved women’s acting and thinking more like men, such as having more partners and premarital sex without shame”:

The superrats, who by my definition are women who act in the same sexually aggressive manner as men do, exemplify these changes. Such shifts are significant because they create a new range of sexual choices for women. But when we consider what has yet to be done, becoming like men seems like the easy part. After all, what is traditionally male is still what is most valued in our society, and what is traditionally female is still suspected and feared as weak and inferior. This is why the sexual evolution, though making some important beginning strides, has not yet overturned the basic male definitions of sex or sexual freedom. That is, despite women’s many advances, we are still living in a man’s world.

Kamen goes on to perform mental gymnastics as she tries to say that women now need to go back to acting like women and force men to let a woman be like a woman without shame. In other words, men have to now live in a woman’s world. The problem is her description of a “woman’s world” still looks a lot like a man’s, just with women in control.

Barbara Seaman, who wrote Free and Female, put it this way:

If there is going to be a breakthrough in human sexuality — and I think that such a breakthrough might be in the wind — it is going to occur because women will start taking charge of their own sex lives. It is going to occur because women will stop believing that sex is for men and that men (their fathers, their doctors, their lovers and husbands, their popes and kings and scientists) should call the shots.

This is the essence of modern feminism: women calling all the shots, in bed, in the home, in the workplace, and in politics. A woman is free to act however she wants to act, and men have to deal with it. As Madonna once said, “I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.”

The feminist attitude ultimately demeans men, reduces them to sexual predators, and fosters distrust between the sexes. Robin Morgan, editor of Ms. magazine, expressed her disdain for men quite bluntly: “I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.”

Andrea Dworkin carried it to another level of hostility when she wrote, “I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig.”

Another charming quote from a feminist “lady” came from Mary Daly: “If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males.”

Not all women feel this way, of course, but this is the tone of the feminist movement, and it has had an impact on women and how they treat men. Noonan spoke of respect and dignity. It’s very difficult for a man to show a woman respect when she doesn’t respect him and when she refuses to honor his dignity as a man. Even worse, she doesn’t respect herself or her own femininity, so why should a man?

Does this mean a man has the right to abuse a woman? Of course not, but the issue is, how should we treat one another as men and women, not just how should a man treat a woman. We each bear a common responsibility to treat one another with mutual affection and respect. When one refuses, the other won’t simply become a doormat.

This is what’s wrong with feminism today, the women’s march, and the #MeToo movement, which has now morphed into a puritanical female empowerment campaign. It’s not about wanting men to “be better.” It’s just the same message we’ve been inundated with for decades, only now it has reached screeching proportions: Men are pigs; women are better!

But women aren’t better. In fact, we’ve become worse. We splash our bodies across the internet for the world to see. We act like either men or whores, but hardly ever as ladies. We reject feminine gentleness for bitchiness. We scoff at female discretion and chastity and applaud our nastiness. We objectify ourselves, as well as men; dominate in sex just like men; and have mechanical detached, dehumanized sex while complaining that we can’t find a strong, loving gentleman who treats us with dignity and respect.

Way back in the 18th century, Alexis de Tocqueville came to America and made an observation. It was at a time when the seeds of women’s equal rights were just being sown. Men were beginning to see women as true equals, though obviously they hadn’t achieved that fullness yet. Equal rights would take many years, but America had a good start.

At that time, Tocqueville made an insightful observation when he compared America to Europe. The quest for democratic equality in Europe had taken a bad turn, as women were confusing equality with sameness (particularly in sexual relationships). “By thus attempting to make one sex equal [the same] to the other, both are degraded,” Tocqueville wrote, “and from so preposterous a medley of the works of nature nothing could ever result but weak men and disorderly women.”

Tocqueville observed that American women were different, better. They were strong like men, but in their own way. At that time, they didn’t have the rights and privileges women do now, but they were setting the stage for it, and they were doing it without abandoning their femininity:

It is that the women of America, who often exhibit a masculine strength of understanding and a manly energy, generally preserve great delicacy of personal appearance and always retain the manners of women, although they sometimes show that they have the hearts and minds of men.

He observed that American men held them in high esteem, showing them respect and honoring their virtue:

This may be accounted for; as the Americans can conceive nothing more precious than a woman’s honor, and nothing which ought so much to be respected as her independence, they hold that no punishment is too severe for the man who deprives her of them against her will.

Tocqueville praised the strength, honor, and dignity of American women, who were no delicate flowers, but hardworking, with minds equal to men. While the ability to be independent was free to most women in America (though certainly not all), many chose domestic life, to care for their families, to love their husbands, and to build a great society for themselves and future generations. For this, they were shown great esteem.

In conclusion, Tocqueville wrote: “[N]ow that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply — to the superiority of their women.”

We no longer can boast of the superiority of our women. Feminists want to, but it’s a lie. Women have debased themselves and weakened men. They have chosen power, lust, ambition, depravity, and greed over their own dignity. Now they seek even more to feed their lusts, no longer content to be the same as men. They want to be superior — superior in power, but not in character. The result is a degradation of our society, as we are infected by a generation of inferior women.