My Sunday usually starts with a cup of coffee and a wander through the bookstore. I park in the 90 minute parking so I have to leave at some point. I favor the history, politics and science sections. I tak an occassional look at the science fiction section, though I seldom read fiction any more, and watch for good deals on classics (especially when I can find Easton Press bindings). I tend to ignore the social studies section. The titles always turn me off. You aren't supposed to judge a book by its cover but the titles make me suspect that everything on those shelves is written by a bunch of whiners who think the world ought to change for their sake.

I haven't been proven wrong. One of the books in men's studies caught my eye so I leafed through it for a while. It was a collection of essays about men and society. The gist of it was that both are bad for each other and need to be changed. The essays pretty much surrounded a theme about perceived masculinity, that in America men are expected to behave with a certain aggression and territoriality, to be competitive. The conclusion was that all of this is bad.

Men ought to be raised to be softer and more gentle. We need to be metrosexualized. We should wear pink and carry hand bags and be excited about hugging because it's better you see. And society needs to be conditioned to accept these newer more sensitive men.

The world is not equitably balanced. Men have unfair advantages. Men have all the good jobs and get all the good money and they're ever so mean. But it's not their fault. Society makes them into hairy hulking beasts. So obviously, the answer is to create a new man and remake society to reinforce our collective rebirth.

To translate: 'It's not fair! Don't you people realize the universe revolves around me?' It's more cleverly done than that though. What they say is that men behave in x manner. But it's not the fault of man because society reinforces x manner and punishes y manner. It's very nice that way because nobody is to blame. (Americans tend to be very good at shifting blame.)

There's always an anecdote as well. 'My little boy likes to play chess and read and build lego cities but he's ostracized because he doesn't play sports.' 'Our son liked playing with dolls in kindergarten and we worried he might be gay and that the other kids would tease him.' On and on.

I understand where they're coming from. It's a knife in the heart of every parent when they see their babies being teased and picked on. They only want their children to be happy. They don't want their children to go through some of the things they remembered facing as children. But, they think the world should change to make things better rather than teaching their children how to adapt.

God knows the marketers are all over it. Look in any magazine, in any mall, at any billboard and you'll see how things are being changed. Men shaved so smooth they squeak, manicured, hair doed, wearing pink shoes. Not so long ago the world would have been certain they were gay. At some point the stereotypical gay boy image became trendy.

The only problem is that their solution can't possibly work.

Society shapes certain aspects of character, I'll give you that, but biology does as well. You can dress men up in pink jump suits and make them hug till their ribs crack but in the end you're still likely to have a bunch of beer-drinking, pizza-eating, football-watching guys. Men and women function differently. Hormones, proteins, brain functions, it's not the same. I believe a significant amount of behavioral differences between men and women can be traced to biology. Certain of these things are hard-wired into our biology, whether you're a man or a woman.

Besides the above, there will always remain a minority who doesn't fit normal perceptions. The gay boy image could become the norm and suddenly actual gays don't really stand out any more. I suppose the theory goes that by homogenizing society, there will be an end to societal rejection. But the staggering variety of humanity makes the premise ludicrous. For example, what am I to do? I'm a gay guy. I own an iron but can't remember the last time I used it. I'll be damned if I'm going to shave anything besides my face. I prefer a handshake to a hug any day. I don't care if my clothes match, and if they do, it's not because of anything I did on purpose. I prefer comfortable clothes to fashionable clothes. On the other hand when I watch sports it's because of the hunks. I know the physical principles and theory that makes a car work but damned if I know how to fix one. I would rather play Final Fantasy than Madden NFL.

I'm too masculine to be metrosexual, too gay to be straight.

Fortunately for me, my parents had the solution before anybody knew there was an issue. They raised me to be comfortable in my own skin. They raised me to be my own person and not worry about appearances or illusions. The people I grew up with recognized it. I was teased as much as anybody. But the fact that I gave as good as I got, that I knew who I was and didn't care that I was being made fun of earned me the respect of my peers. Certainly I was never popular as such but I was respected. The tattlers, the whiners, the cry-babies were the ones made miserable (and I won't deny my participation in tormenting them).

Regardless, the point is that the problem would be better solved by teaching kids confidence. Teach them to be themselves to act right and be proud of themselves when they do.

This effort to homogenize society has other problems. It degrades polite behavior. I often hold a door for people (especially women) when I go to a store. Sunday I held the door to the coffee shop and the lady was visibly shocked (pleasantly so, but none the less. . .). There was a time when it was a thoughtless action people barely noticed. Then somebody woke up one day and decided it was some sort of gender based slight so it became vaguely inappropriate. Now who goes around bitching about rudeness?

I'll be the first to admit that I hold to old-fashioned values. I feel distinctly uncomfortable when a woman holds a door open for me. There are very few women I allow to pay for my meal or my drink. I would probably burst into flames if a woman bought me flowers or chocolates. Why do I think these things? I have nothing vested in behaving towards women in such a way. At best I'm going to make a new friend should we strike up a conversation. I'm not going to get laid or meet my soul mate.

No.  I hold to my old-fashioned values purposely. It makes for a better more civilized world.  Homogenizing our society makes for an oatmeal society.  If we are to celebrate diversity we must recognize it, and appreciate it for what it is.  Diversity means different, not the same, distinct from other things.

 

Men and women are diverse.  Men should be permitted to be masculine as women should be permitted to be feminine.  I was still a kid in the 80s.  But I have recollections of tv images, commercials, magazines that portrayed women in a particularly masculine light.  During the nineties it shifted and women once again drifted towards femininity.  During the same period there was the shifting of men away from masculinity.  I also remember during the 80s how frequently men were admonished about allowing themselves to be emotional, how there were support groups for everything, how hugging was particularly big at the time.  Then in the 90s we end up with Abercrombie and Fitch and The Gap and Banana Republic with their quasi- homosexual soft porn advertisements.  It was the birth of the metrosexual.  The Salon.com article I linked above seems to me to be clearly in favor of the metrosexual engineering project.  It's as though people are trying to erase these genetically drawn lines.

 

But what is served?  It won't solve the problem of men being men.  It won't end certain gender inequities.  It won't preclude peer rejection.  It feels like an oblique attempt at societal engineering.  It is an addition to slavery guilt.  White people ought to be sorry for slavery and reparations need to be made.  Men ought to be sorry for being masculine and ought to be remade into something less masculine.

 

There will always be exceptions.  There will be men who are not terribly masculine.  There will be women who bring home the family bacon.  There will be gays who actually like monster truck rallies.  No matter how hard these people scrub with their eraser, no matter how long they spend trying to blur the lines and balance the equation it will never work.