But the rules are unknown and defeat seems certain. Nevertheless, in the darkest hour when all seems lost, he finds strength to carry on the struggle toward his first victory. Then, he triumphs over the ultimate challenge and returns home a transformed man. Regardless of what form the heroic journey takes, however, a kind of innocence characterizes its beginning, an innocence lost, as it often is in real life, when adversity strips away all his happy illusions to unveil the determined underdog within. In some measure, most of us make this heroic journey.
Heroes are men whose efforts, violent or otherwise, benefit women.
The myth machines flash heroic images of male violence onto the big screen of cinema and the little screens of television, urban myths confirmed by the hoards of groupies who reward apparently violent men, such as football stars, boxers and professional wrestlers, with sex. We told men that if they killed themselves, we'd call them heroes. Commonly, pop-feminists associate aggressivity with violence, and that is how society most frequently characterizes masculinity today. Most men love invigorating challenges. Pop-feminists equate this with violence.