Letters to the Editor
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if a man in a two career couple had the option of living on his half of their joint income, taking care of his kids
and being able to fuck any women he wanted any time he wanted, he would consider his wife optional (at least if she gave him any trouble) so it's reasonable to assume, (and there's a lot of evidence so you don't have to assume) that a lot of women have the same reaction.
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boy crisis
is as absurd as the wage gap.
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act how?
This is a worthwhile thing to spend some time thinking about. In our own minds, many of us regard ourselves as free-thinking individualists, who choose to do what we do for our own reasons, unconstrained by what other people think. However, rational thought isn't the only thing the brain is busy doing, and there are plenty of unmet and often irrational needs we are only aware of when we pay close and careful attention. One of these is a sense of belonging, and social purpose.
Social progress has increased the possibilities for women in this regard. If they want to live a more traditional life, there is a well established and respected way to do so. Should they wish to instead pursue a career, that is well regarded as well. The possibilities for women have greatly expanded in the last 50 years.
For men, this isn't the case. The role of bread-winner and protector isn't available like it used to be. Economic necessity makes single income households uncommon. You would think that assistance in bringing in income is a good thing, but it can also be a reflection of one's inadequacy to do it solo, like their fathers before them. While the traditional role society offers men has diminished, new models haven't really surfaced as alternatives. This puts men in a bind.
So something new is called for - but what? While I can sense the need for it, I don't know what it might look like either. Protracted adolescence? Seems a popular alternative, and nothing against the slacker lifestyle, but how can that possibly work at age 50?
Good luck Edward Keenan! If you can find a new model that works on a large scale, it could change the world in the same way feminism has - for the better.
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Like the old joke
I'd rather have half my stuff
..than all of you.
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Flannery O'Connor said it best way back in the early 1960s...
"On the subject of the feminist business, I just never think, that is I never think of certain qualities as masculine or feminine. I tend to divide people into two categories: the Irksome and the Non-Irksome without regard to sex. Yes, and there are also the Medium Irksome and Rare Irksome."
On the whole "males are optional" thing--he's right, they're more "optional" than females in a nuclear family. The biggest difference between men and women is that women can physically bear children and men can't. Of course, women can't bear children entirely without men, but men willing to be sperm donors will probably always be easier to come by than women willing to be surrogate mothers.
That said (and despite what Brightstar, Parson Jim, etc. say), MOST women would prefer to have and raise children with a husband than have some other family arrangement.
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they would PREFER it yes, given "reasonable" male behavior
men are willing, in fact are required, to put up with female behavior that is anything but reasonable (in both cases I am assuming an absence of economic necessity).
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re: acting and doing
This is a timely topic and has been since the beginning of agriculture. The question of what it means to be a man is simple and straight forward, biologically. It is, in fact, nonetheless, not as Clark-Flory counterasserts, to not act like a woman.' To be a man means to assume risks and thereby to reap the rewards or to fade away at the lowest rungs of societal hierarchy. Manhood is ever dependent on the biological truth that there is an excess of spermdonors in the gene pool; men are on the whole expendable. There is the answer and the basis on which is it answered.
If that seems unsatisfying an answer in our presumed enlightened day and age, then it is perhaps the question that needs to be better worded, which is precisely what Clark-Flory does when she slips in the indirect question: "what it means to be a decent man."
And hereby we must ask in this directed debate what in society gets to determine decency? My guess is that it won't have testicles.
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There is a certain satisfaction though
I have wrestled with this question for much of my life. I really do think it means something; not, so much if at all, to define yourself against or as different from women, as to define yourself against the witch's brew of your own hormones and instincts, and to deal with the weight of enormous historical/social presumptions.
I was brought to believe in quaint old fashioned concepts like honour and women and children first. I don't think that these are concepts to be ridiculed; I also don't think that they are concepts that do not pertain to women. But I do think that a man, to have any self-respect at all, must maintain a level of honour and self-sacrifice, as I am sure women do too. I don't think that they are determined against each other.
I think that a man has to be prepared to fight, and to lose fights if unavoidable; I do not think that being willing to fight is incompatible with pacifism: certainly Ghandi and Jesus were pretty hard fighters when it came right down to it. Me, I'm a little bit less pure, and feel able and willing to engage in fisticuffs when the situation absolutely demands. And to be honest, it felt damn good when I had right on my side, and felt justified and righteous in unleashing a can of whoopass on some deserving scumbag.
And I've taken a couple of beatings in a good cause in my time.
I think it is about a lot of the old now derided ideals, of selflessness, self-sacrifice, and silence and equanimity in the face of danger and defeat. Much as Hemingway was in life a real asshole, there is still a lot to be said for Hemingwayesque machismo, of strong silence in the face of despair, of the stoic and undemonstrative acceptance of deep emotions.
In terms of social policy, we want men to stick around, to be responsible fathers and husbands; I don't see very much encouragement or support or honour being handed out to the guys that do that.
I've done that. It wasn't always, or mostly, fun. There is a certain satisfaction though. I can look myself in the eye in the mirror in the morning, and more importantly, I look both my son and my wife in the eye too.