This Is Making You Effeminate

Men do hard things.

Effeminacy, as St. Thomas Aquinas defines it, is the vice that is opposite of the virtue of perseverance, namely, “when a man is ready to forsake a good on account of difficulties which he cannot endure.” St Thomas continues and explains: “This is what we understand by effeminacy, because a thing is said to be ‘soft’ if it readily yields to the touch.” St Thomas also describes effeminacy as a reluctance to suffer due to an attachment to pleasure.

Effeminacy, then, is when a man refuses to do what he needs to do, out of fear of dealing with hardships or losing his precious comforts, to which he is disorderly attached. He is a slave to comfort and his worldly pleasures become more important to him than the pursuit of virtue or acting righteously as a man.

This showcases a sort of spiritual “softness”, in which the actions of a man are determined not by morality, values, or principles, but by that which is easier and most comfortable.

Effeminate is different from femininity —which is a virtue women should pursue—, but effeminacy does make a man less masculine, as it makes him softer, less perseverant, and incapable of leading properly.

What Causes Effeminacy?

“This effeminacy is caused in two ways. On one way, by custom: for where a man is accustomed to enjoy pleasures, it is more difficult for him to endure the lack of them. On another way, by natural disposition, because, to wit, his mind is less persevering through the frailty of his temperament. This is how women are compared to men, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii, 7): wherefore those who are passively sodomitical are said to be effeminate, being womanish themselves, as it were.”
— St. Thomas Aquinas

For the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on the first one, because that is the main cause of effeminacy in our postmodern world. It is true that some men, because of their temperament, will be more or less inclined towards acting effeminately, but that’s a matter for another article.

In this one, the goal is to expose the main attachments that the modern man has, that are considered generally “harmless”, and yet aren’t harmless at all, and provide strategies to fight against effeminacy effectively.

We know that effeminacy is an excessive attachment to comfort, which leads to spiritual softness and an incapability to do the hard things that a man must do. There are a lot of obvious sources of effeminacy: addictions to junk food, video games, social media, entertainment, pornography, and so on, but there are a few that aren’t so commonly spoken of and yet are very strong attachments that need to be removed from your life. For the modern man, from what I’ve seen, aside from the things already mentioned, there are 3 unspoken and distinct attachments that make him effeminate.

I anticipate that some readers will dislike what I’m about to explain, because these are things that most men are profoundly hooked to, so much so that they can’t even begin to consider removing them from their lives or seeing them as a source of effeminacy. I encourage you to read the whole article with an open mind, and ask yourself honestly if the things I’m about to describe could be things that are keeping you addicted to comfort or attached to the world and if getting rid of them could be a step forward in your journey towards sanctity.

I will explain what they are, and then provide both general and more specific strategies to combat them and remove effeminacy from your life.

So what exactly are these things that are making you effeminate?