I wouldn’t so much call myself a misogynist as I would describe myself someone who appreciates and celebrates maleness. Now and again I would come across articles about the way things have changed for men and boys in this country and it does fill me with a mild sadness. A little over four years ago Kim Du Toit wrote a landmark article in the blogosphere entitled The Pussification Of The Western Male, which caused such a stir among the writers of the time that the ensuing flame war was practically a cosmic event.
And still today, in less polemic terms, articles now and again would crop up lamenting the sad state of the young men in our country. In The Problem With Boys, Marty Nemko channels Jake Tyler Brigance with an opening laundry list of social problems that he later on reveals as those plaguing boys today.
And our schools continue to get ever more feminized. Competition, one of boys’ favorite motivators, has largely been excised in favor of “cooperative learning,†(which, in the real world, usually means that the bright do the dull’s work.) Stories of heroism and bravery are replaced with tomes about relationships and female heroes. Recess is increasingly being replaced by yet another round of phonics. Girls are told they can accomplish anything while boys are taught that masculinity is an anti-social trait that must be extinguished. It’s no surprise that the number of boys who said they didn’t like school rose 71 percent between 1980 and 2001. [...]
Ironically, educated parents often do particularly badly by boys. The college curriculum and the media consumed by the intelligentsia stresses the accomplishments of women and the evils of men. So, these parents too often feel justified in emasculating, squeezing the maleness out of boys: aggressiveness, competition, physicality, dislike of long seatwork. Of course, I’m not advocating that parents allow Junior to become a savage, but the above qualities, channeled wisely, can be the stuff of which greatness is made. We can refine but rarely remold so we must honor males’ ways of being, just as we’ve been urged now for decades to honor females’.
The article is full of the many things that I and many others have observed over the years. Growing up in the Eighties I was at quite a turning point in the way cultures raised young men. As a youth I was quite a sickly wimp, which, in the zero-sum game that whatever deity one may believe plays with our fates, was made up for by my immense mental capability. And, quite apparently, my inability to exhibit false modesty.
One of the things that I have always paid attention to is the way the sexes interact. It always amazes me how different men and women relate to each other, but moreso, the beauty of the way they are different, and complementary. Articles like the ones cited above cause me to lament because the way with which these differences are not treated as something good, or at the very least something different. Rather, it is treated as a negative.
I suppose I don’t understand why men are treated like an evil in a world where both sexes are still quite important in forming most fulfilling relationships. Most of my friends are men, many of whom have girlfriends. The best girlfriends I have ever met are the ones who know when to step back and let a man be himself and when to use her power as a complementary force. The worst girlfriends are the ones who take everything good about their man and try to change him into this idealized version that they think they want. ‘Nuff said.
January 22 2008, 20:05 | Filed under: Culture | No Comments |
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