Women’s rights have grown by leaps and bounds over the last century or so. It started with the right to vote, continued on to the right have a career and to participate in the political arena. In this modern, enlightened day and age women are the equal of any man, anywhere. In Western society women have won the right to choose how they want to live, almost without restriction. Now it’s really just a matter of shattering the glass ceiling, and a woman’s life will truly be her own to make of as she likes. She has thrown off the chains of chauvinistic repression and kicked open the kitchen door to stride free, making her own choices and charting her own course through a life of her own devising.
It almost makes me wish I were a woman. Men just don’t have it so easy, for the modern man is caught in limbo with no clear expectations of who or what he should be. Men don’t know how to be men anymore. On the one hand, he is expected to be kind, caring and sensitive, attentive and responsive to his wife’s every need. On the other hand he is also expected to be the breadwinner, protector of the household and as tough as The Rock in the face of every challenge. He is trapped between conflicting identities, which for today’s discussion we will refer to as The Enlightened Man and The Real Man.
The Enlightened Man is perfectly comfortable wearing sandals with his turtleneck sweater while munching on a 100% organically grown granola bar (of which he has a goodly supply stashed in his man purse for distribution to the needy). He’s hip to the latest trends, sensitive to the rights of others and places relationships before money and power. Oh, and he never has sex, preferring to make love to a woman that he has already made a deep and lasting commitment to. He works daily to quash his own Real Man proclivities, viewing them as an outmoded evolutionary instinct, useful back in the caveman days but no longer required in this urbane civilization we now co-create.
By contrast, the Real Man is very much the Alpha male stereotype. He’s tough and strong, protective to those he loves and always in charge. He’s expected to be more street smart than book smart, and do whatever needs doing to get the job done, no matter what the cost to him personally. He possesses an aura of danger and is always in control of his emotions. Though he likes chick flicks, he doesn’t watch them because they might make him cry. He has no problem ordering people around, because he always knows better. His place in the natural order of things is clearly defined, for he is the one who defined them. He is man in his natural state, keeping the wolves from devouring his domain.
So where does that leave me? My natural state is one of the Real Man, a protective, defensive, alpha male with chauvinistic tendencies. I want to protect my liberated wife, even though I know she can take care of herself, for that’s what liberated women do. What’s worse, I also know that she actually wants me to protect her from the evils of the world. So I’m left trying to figure out the most sensitive way of beating the crap out of the guy who’s hitting on my wife? What?
I think that a new identity needs to be created for men. Let’s call him the Real Enlightened Man. Who would the Real Enlightened Man be? At home, perhaps the R.E.M. manages an urban farm, where all of life is seen through bamboo green colored lenses. A true independent, his diesel car is fuelled with re-processed cooking oil that he obtained from local restaurants. Wanting to spread the gospel of Real Enlightened Manliness, he makes all his neighbours “go green” with envy as he drives by all gas stations without ever stopping. He even helps the local economy by making everyone he passes hungry by spreading the aroma of french fries from his exhaust pipe.
At work he’s a self-made millionaire, owning a granola bar factory that manufactures extra large, 100% organically grown granola bars. The major selling feature of these granola bars is twofold: First, they are exceptionally dry, making them great with beer. Second, because of their dryness they are very hard, which makes them a good stick for beating the crap out of less enlightened men. Wadda ya think? Yeah?
Whoever the Real Enlightened Man turns out to be, I do know this: he will know where to draw the line between his Alpha tendencies and his sensitive respect for others. While he won’t be afraid to do what is necessary to protect his family, violence will not be his first choice, only an available option should all other avenues prove fruitless. He will be secure in himself, and most importantly, he won’t let society determine who he is. And that will always be the true measure of the man: his ability to use his own discretion in determining what is right and appropriate, irrespective of who popular opinion would have him be and do.
2 Comments
I could not agree more…it is about forging your own path, not a predefined one. Popular opinion may be “popular”…it certainly does not make it right!
Ya know Marc, I have to tell ya,I refer so many of your posts to my guy.
But what is with these men never having sex???
I feel when my guy has been burden with a hard day that is usually the ticket!
Yesterday, he was so grumpy and irritable. Nothing I said was right. So most of the day remained silent.
He was over worked and over tired so he crashed on the couch and I continued to work then paid bills.
The obvious is what happened, at least for us.
For us love making is more of a ritual where you gain strength and renewed insight from the other.
The same goes with me when I am PMSing.He will tell me before I even look at the calendar.
We both work long hours and we don’t have kids yet but I really think after kids the need for intimacy is more so.
We both gain prospective by being intimate.
I think we are on the right track.