For Reference: St. Thomas Aquinas on Effeminacy

From the RadTradThomist:

It is interesting that in our attempt to penetrate, through a historical analysis, the essence of the classical conception of the true gentleman, we should stumble upon article 1, question 138 of the Secunda Secundae of St. Thomas' Summa Theologica. Here St. Thomas treats the vice of "effeminacy" or "softness" (mollities), which is opposed to the perseverance necessary for all forms of fidelity. To be "effeminate" is to be willing to forsake a good, rather than endure difficulties and toils for the sake of the attainment of that good. The "difficulties" which St. Thomas refers to here, are not even the "heavy blows" of catastrophe or grave misfortune, it is, rather, the "soft blows" of the daily machinations of circumstance.

 The final part of the last sentence is a new angle that I had not pondered so far. Thus it should follow from this that unless we take continual ascetic effort to "swim against the current (of the world, the flesh and the devil)" in our daily lives, we inevitably acquire the vice of effeminacy.