An Interesting Essay
Many of you out there may have already read this essay, The Pussification of the Western Male, by The Other Side of Kim--but I think it is worth re-reading or reading for the first time as it speaks volumes about what is happening to many men in our culture. I do not particularly agree with all of this essay, of course, as a woman, but it does ring true in many areas. Especially where he talks about men not taking a stand against misandry--apparently, it is just easier not to.
posted by Helen at 9:20 AM
23 Comments:
Well, I didn't read the whole thing; in fact I stopped when the writer seemed to approve of Truman saying that the critic would need beef steak for his eye and a truss for his nethers when he, Truman, got finished with him. History shows that Margaret was a feeble singer and the critic was justified in saying so. As far as going to war, I'd rather not-- its either too hot or too cold or too scary or too boring or all the above at different times. If that makes me less of a man then so be it. By the way did you see American Idol last night? It was fabulous!
It's an interesting rant. I don't agree with all of it (esp. the part about dog fighting; I couldn't care less about cock fighting though; nor do I approve of brawling over trivial matters), but he does make a good point about the faux-manliness that's portrayed in rap music. I've often found it odd how men who stick up for men are labeled as "women haters" or at least "whiners" (e.g., those who protest are men are portrayed in media or entertainment), but rap artists who refer to women as "ho's" and promote exploitation, or even in some cases violence, toward them are given a free pass, for the most part. But since most rap artists are black, I assume there's a race angle there.
Anyway, it seems that real manliness (which sometimes can be rather boorish, I'll admit) is denigrated, while the faux-manliness portrayed in rap music is celebrated, at least as indicated by its popularity and the awards it receives. For example, few seemed too terribly upset about Eminem's lyrics portraying violence against his former girlfriend. But his gay-bashing? Well, that just went too far.
The Other Side of Kim wrote: "One of the characteristics of the non-pussified man (and this should strike fear into the hearts of women and girly-men everywhere) is that he never quits just because the odds seem overwhelming."
Well, I agree that a full grown man (you can substitue empowered, manly, non-pussified or your choice, I like to go with Webb Wilder) is like a SHARP knife. You can get cut with it if you forget that it is sharp, but it is important to have one for the hard cutting or God forbid knife fights.
But as a full grown man who wears glasses cause he needs them, no man is safer for my family than me! So I do not scare my wife although I occasionally do my children. With my children it is because I will say "That is enough" and the behavior in question, usually screaming at their mother, stops.(The children in question are 3.)
And honestly, I feel a bit uncomfortable with the term pussification. Women are great and wonderful, and the term feels a bit condescending to me. I love men too, and treasure and cultivate my manliness, but I prefer terms that do not cloud the important issues of the loss of manliness with terms which distract with thoughts of sexism.
I will think more about this.
Trey
What people choose to name their male babies provides insight into where society is at that time. I know the actual stats are available somewhere, but there are sure a lot of boys named Jonah, Noah, Caleb, etc., around these days. Robert, John, William, George, etc., are very much "out" these days. Over all, I'd say the names given to baby boys are not nearly as masculine as they were a generation or 2 ago.
For the most part I really like this essay. I agree with Trey about the use of the term "pussification," primarily because I was taught by my parish priest that using vulgar terms often showed a lack of character.
"Some guy" doesn't seem to understand that the quality of the singing had nothing to do with the issue. It was about respect and his daughter's honor. I believe violence has its place. Althouhg my father was a university professor, I heard him threaten to kick someone's ass more than once. They never took him up on it.
Bullying is unacceptable but sometimes someone needs to be punched just because he's a complete jerk and needs to know it.
I love this statement: "Because only the strong men propagate." Of the seven grand children of my parents, 6 have conservative/libertarian fathers who have worked very hard at being fathers, providing for their kids, spending time with them, etc. The one liberal father, he and my sister divorced when their daughter was about 4, was a lousy father, has spent the last 30 years trying to find himself, rarely paid child support, and lacked that "never quits" attitude.
It's funny about the "never quits." I teach my kids that, even my daughters. I believe it has been the one thing that has kept my life from going down the tubes. In sports I tell my kids, "I don't care if your down by 50 points and there's one minute left in the game. You go out there and play as hard as you can. You make the other guy respect you. Let them know they've been in a fight." Often I've had people tell me if we ever have a war they want me on their side. I think this attitude is why, not my physical size, strength or anything else.
Dadvocate wrote: "Bullying is unacceptable but sometimes someone needs to be punched just because he's a complete jerk and needs to know it." Agreed. And strategic use of aggression is NOT bullying.
Case in point: My daughter was about 5 and she was playing at a McDonald's play area. A younger, smaller boy threatened her with one of the errant balls that got lost from the ball pen. He would rear back to throw it at her and she would run to me for help, advice, or comfort.
I suggested that she tell the boy that if he did it again she would hit HIM with a ball. She liked this advice and went back to play. He repeated his threat and she said that she would hit him with a ball and he said "You can't do that, you are a girl." She came back for more advice.
What he did not know is that my daughter has a wonderful arm and throws like a man, not even a boy. MUCH better than I did at that age. So I suggested that he had been warned and that she should throw one of the balls at him as hard as she could and hit him between the eyes if he threatened again. These balls are hollow and perfect for this intended use.
She returned to play, he returned to threats, and she threw a ball past his left ear with such velocity that his eyes almost fell out of his head and he went crying to his grandmother who happened to be sitting right next to me. He tried to paint the picture that he was being picked on and the grandmother corrected him "I saw the whole thing. You were lucky that that little girl did not hit you with the ball, she throws better than you. Now appologize to her and we are going home."
As he went to offer an half-assed appology the grandmother turned, looked at me, smiled and winked. Then they left. I have great hopes for that boy. I doubt he will ever become a bully. Part of it was picking the wrong girl with the wrong father to pick on (or was it the right girl?) and part of it was a grandmother who appreciated natural consequences and knew the differences between aggression and bullying.
More often, the caretaker would see the boy as the victim and coddle him and attack the child that threw the ball at him rather than assisting him to learn that bullying is wrongs and will get your ass kicked.
Were the roles reversed, I hope that the boy would have been coached into doing the same thing. Bullying is gender neutral and wrong. I wonder with the fear of male power in our culture if the boy would have the same chance to stand up for himself and see that he can use aggression appropriately to protect himself. I hope so.
One problem with much of duToit's argument for "not taking it any more" (and hopefully not taking a rant, which isn't meant to be a parsed argument, too seriously) is that another facet of manliness is not deigning to acknowledge silliness which is below you. A fair bit of misandry is pretty annoying, and many of the stereotypes (like the commercial he mentioned) frustrating, but if you do much more than laugh at them, you're whining, and that's not manly. Consequently, men don't have to get together and beat drums to affirm their manhood, nor do they have to complain about their characterization as overgrown children. Don't be one.
I disagree that messiness is a particularly male characteristic. Let's go back to that bastion of manliness training, the Scout Law: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverant. I and a few other guys I know keep as good a house as most single women, better in many cases.
Lastly, though, du Toit is right that sometimes, some folks just need a dot on the nose, or to realize that they are in imminent danger of receiving such if they don't desist.
Dr. Helen,
During the Hurricane Rita, watching the cars file out on I-45, and seeing my husband--a sports-loving, easy-going Doctor most days--prowl our house like a bear, I was overcome with gratitude for my man and men in general. Men were the ones boarding up houses, loading shot guns, shopping for food (I was the only woman in Kroger and there were lots of well-contained, but authoritative men filling up their carts--they meant business) and protecting the family. A girlfriend who is a single mother of four children was making her way alone. Terrifying.
Honorable men protect, defend, and stand up. They play aggressive sports, hunt, fix things. As the essayest points out: they are simple. Work, play, food and sex keep most men happy (hey, this statement might make some angry, but the man started throwing around generalizations first).
Real women love real men. He's right about that, too. Who finds Al Gore sexy? Ewwwwww....
When in NYC last summer with friends, my son and our friend's son ran too far ahead of the group. Both my husband and my friend (a guy) boomed in unison, "STOP!" to the boys. It was like the boys hit an invisible wall. Children need a dad. The fact that this self-evident fact even needs to be said shows where our society stands regarding manhood and fatherhood and families.
Dr Melissa,
As on occasional visitor to this site, I just want to thank you for those words. It's nice to see women who do appreciate men being around, as I (and I think most of the men posting here) do appreciate having (feminine) women around.
A couple of specifics:
"Work, play, food and sex keep most men happy..."
Speaking for myself, I don't think men are simple souls and may be more complicated than women. That being said, our needs are simple, and this about sums it up. No offense taken here.
"A girlfriend who is a single mother of four children was making her way alone."
Too many women are single moms by their own choice (may God have mercy on those who are not), and find themselves in difficult situations because life was too comfortable for them otherwise. I hope our daughters (and the sons who would, themselves, leave) learn the lesson early.
Many of us in middle-class America find our lives awfully cushy and safe. It's awfully easy to get bored with a spouse and forget that there are real reasons that people paired-off in twos to make a home and raise inevitible children.
Thanks again for those words ;-)
When each of my three nieces graduated from college, I took them aside and told them that if they were ever in a situation where they thought they had no choice but to do what someone wanted them to do and they felt they couldn't tell their parents, that they should call me, as I was only 5 hours away by car, and I would "fix" the problem.
Pussification is a vulgar term but accurately describes the feminization of America, which is nothing new.
I think it was Chris Matthews who dubbed the democrats and republicans the Mommy Party and the Daddy Party, and he was right.
The British Empire was built by earlier versions of soccer fans, uniformed, trained and armed.
Manners came later.
A guy once told me, apropos of a situation he had just been in and like one I had been in earlier--but he didn't know it--that in good times the violin teachers get the girls. In bad times, the big, ugly guys get the girls. Once the big, ugly guys fix things, the violin teachers get the girls and the big, ugly guys are standing around going, "Huh? What happened?"
This is not a matter of pickiness, but of a million-year-old survival instinct.
Still, it can get annoying.
I should say that the situation in which I had found myself didn't leave me feeling dumped. I was just the big, ugly object.
In what I find to be an interesting irony, anatomically complete males (who have a functioning spine and testicles)don't sweat the small stuff. Most of the time, misandry is seen as small stuff. The thinking goes something like "Oh, you hate men, screw you. Like you are going to get in my way." It is close to the "Oh yeah, watch me" that pops into our head when someone says we can't do something.
On the other hand, attitudes and names which do not hurt us CAN and DO hurt our culture and our children. In this aspect, I think that ignoring misandry as irrelevant is myopic on our part.
Trey
Good point, Trey. I know that kids pick up on these things because my kids, unprompted, say things about TV shows, commercials, school classes, etc. My son in the 7th grade was not happy at all regarding the tone of the domestic abuse class they had in school one day which focused entirely on abusive men except for a side comment by the instrutor that the abuse could be a woman. Some bad experiences he's had with his mother made this especially irritating for him.
Trey and Dadvocate,
I do think that the attitudes toward men in commericals and the culture affect kids and others on some level. Sure, to some people, it sounds funny to berate men but the kids pick up on the hypocrisy of the simultaneous berating and belittling of men and the non-stop message that they are or have been the "privileged class." Maybe we should ask the guys at Duke how privileged they feel with the fair shake they have gotten so far from the just US legal system and from their own university.
It's damaging to both men and women. Take for instance the show 'Everyone Loves Raymond'. I could never watch it because the wife was such a shrew and was always putting down her husband.
That scenario is pervasive on sit-coms. What I would like to ask the writers, if these women are so smart and the men so dumb, why are the men home taking care of the kids and the women out making the big bucks???
"A fair bit of misandry is pretty annoying, and many of the stereotypes (like the commercial he mentioned) frustrating, but if you do much more than laugh at them, you're whining, and that's not manly."
That's a fair point. But at what point does "qui tacet" become "consentire"?
At what point does one say, "Enough with the castration, already?"
When DOES the worm turn?
Incidentally, of the 500-odd email responses I got from women when I originally posted the essay/rant, the response was about 50-1 agreement.
Amazingly, and my wife can attest to this, more than a score of women said that they'd left their "sensitive" husbands and married good ol' boy types -- and have never been happier since.
The idea that men should 'just take it' is itself discriminatory bigotry, since objectification is in and of itself fundamentally wrong.
But we persist in accepting that discriminatory bigotry against males for the blunt ugly reason that our high standards of living are bought and paid for with the integrity, safety, health, and lives of a great body of self-sacrificing men, and we are simply not willing to give up any more of our luxuries in exchange for more expensive, but safer, industry and infrastructure where they are concerned.
And not only that, but we drop-kick our sons into the crucible so that this great body of self-sacrificing men will have a constant and reliable resource stream.
In short, we program our sons and daughters, as well as ourselves, into valuing men's integrity, safety, health, and lives less than we value those of women and pre-gendered children simply so that we can have cheaper goods and infrastructure costs. . .albeit at the expense of our sons' well-being.
Nobody, of course, wants to admit to this, but neither can anybody seriously argue against it; it's patent truth.
So it just gets ignored.
But we are all nevertheless culpable in this exchange of male life for cheaper goods, and training of men to make that exchange for the benefit of others. . .all of us culpable; me, and thee, and everyone else as well.
Mrs. Du Toit,
You sound like a wonderful wife. I think the Internet just attracts a lot of trolls--even at non-controversial sites. One day, I was looking at a medical site where a kindly doctor was talking about making home visits and he had to turn off comments because trolls were telling him off. Why? Who knows? So, when you write something controversial, trolls as well as introspective commenters will appear.
Thanks for taking the time to stop by!
asksiom/everyone:
So don't do it. Period. Just say no to misandry. And it's other side.
When I was a scared kid who tended to get picked on & bullied, it was a woman--check that, a girl, my baby-sitter, who taught me to fight back when I was attacked. Not elegantly, but it worked. I'm a strong guy & I was a strong kid and learning to fight from a girl means you learn to fight dirty.
Events resolved themselves.
I got involved seriously in sports in general watching Mary Lou Retton win the gymnastics all-around gold in LA in 1984. My first sports hero.
It has been my eternal misfortune that I ended up to tall to be a gymnast, too poor of reflex for baseball--my second hero was Mike Schmidt, the best there's ever been at 3B & the best there ever will be. Alas, I turned out to be too short (my growth spurt was ill-timed) for hoops but my THIRD sports hero was The Round Mound of Rebound hisself, and twice I was privileged to see him, when he was young and unstoppable, make Michael Jordan (tm) look like a skinny little playground bully at the old Spectrum.
But I got natural hops and I played. I've also fought. I've fought to defend myself and I've fought to defend people who were taking underserved heat from enemies who were either too big or too politically formidable for their victims to defend themselves.
Intimidation has usually been enough.
Oddly, though, I am not permitted under the rules of society to defend myseld from a domestic terrorist (my step-father) who is a former academic beauracrat and has spent eight years attempting to get me to self-destruct. I'm 33. I had surgery for testicular cancer surgery on September 6, one day, I discovered a few days later (9/11, actually) after one of my closest and certainyly my most loyal friend killed herself after 2 years and change of psychiatric abuse. Six weeks later, another friend died from cancer. On Easter Sunday, I lost another one from an allergic reaction resulting when a doctor failed to note that a medication he was prescribed was chemically almost identical to one the guy was lethally allergic to.
I'm still quite strong but I have no wind and my concentration is shot. I'd like to work as much as I can but if I do I lose medical coverage. And I can't work full-time.
And I have a monster step-father who has at every turn threatened me in carefull ways against which I cannot legally retaliate in a fashion that would enable him to pick up on the notion that his kind of violence is worse then the schoolyard punch-up/shake-hands variety.
I lost a testicle. So did John Kruk & Lance Armstrong. But I know who the half-man is here.
I thought I was nuts, or off-kilter at the minim (more than usual, I mean) until I started describing some of his behavior to a few women I know have been through bad spots with abusive men in various guises and every time, when I asked if they thought I was out of my mind, the responses ranged from "Not at all" to "Get out as fast as you can."
Except I have no place to go.
How do you like those apples.
Gender feminism and Neo-conservatism are the two most virulent toxins to infest the last half-century of our lives. They emasculate & debilitate men, or drive them to the wrong kind of violence & encourage women to make idiotic life decisions, engage in violence themselves without considering consequences to themselves or others--some guys do hit back, and the strength differential between a strong man and a strong woman is similar to the difference in strength between a man and a decent sized gorilla.
Women are not only told they can have everything but that they should have everything. Not surprisingly, too many become desperate housewives or too-young spinsters.
Men are told...well, that we need to be medicated. Or deleted.
404 Object Not Found.
This is not desirable. Any of it.
Dem=girly party. R=manly party.
Great.
Regarding the liberal dems, I keep thinking on Eliot:
"In the room the women come and go,
Talking of Michelangelo."
Regarding the hysterically violent Rs, I go back to Plath:
"You do not do, you do not do,
Any more, black shoe..."
Plath, by the way, broke herself up and a girlfriend with laughter when she read the text. I've heard tapes of her readings. She never got her own stuff right when she put it in the air. Part of the problem, I suspect.
Still, I like it.
Me, I just have to use the breath-deprived muscle I have to survive, my wits & the threat of what I might do if I'm pushed too far.
Which of course brings us to Dirty Harry channelled by Clint Eastwood:
"Do you feel lucky?"
And perhaps by extension to Hillary Duff as Maggie:
"Is that enough truth to suit you?"
People die slowly or quickly every day not despite but because far too many women AND men spend their lives in drawing rooms, virtual and otherwise, and talk of Michelangelo.
My wind's not good, but I'm a stubborn SOB & I've got another question for everyone whose lost anyone because some political nitwit, some talking head, some collective or accumulation decided blather was better recourse then direct action.
So what do we do?
Another quote, if you'll spare me the space & time:
"No one gets left behind."
And this ain't a multiple choice test, kids. You do or you don't. There is no try.
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