Exactly my point, MGibson
Anyone here on record as in support of Ms (or Miss, or Mrs.) Schlussel’s “theorems” (tee hee) is invited to give me a clearer understading of the phenomenon of the “real man,” by naming some Y-chromosome carriers who could be described as “NON-Real Men.” Please be prepared to defend your allegations, and to explain why I should not feel offended on behalf of those you name.
Perhaps these might be examples of problems with being a man in 2001:
[ul]
I am very reluctant to aproach an obviously lost child in an attempt to help for fear of someone screaming “pedophile”.
Most people assume that my divorce was inevitably my fault, in spite of the fact that while I was attempting to work out our differences, she was inviting another man to come live with her in our house. Said house is still being underwritten by a 4 figure check from me each month, in spite of the fact that they both work.
It is almost impossible for a good father to get custody of his kids from a bad mother, unless the most extreme type of abuse is proven, and often not then.
One often reads vilification of “deadbeat dads”, and there are stringent penalties imposed on these men (as their should be if the are truly deadbeats). There is no such enforcement mechanism to make sure fathers are allowed to see their children as ordered by the courts if the mother wants to prevent it.
Society glorifies the single mother, relegating the role of the male in rearing children to that of an unnecessary biological afterthought. Children are raised without a caring male role model, and often have no clue how to act themselves (boys especially) upon reaching their teen years.
Men are often villified for wanting to participate in “mens” activities. The fact that we may want a poker night with the guys, or a trip to a sporting event with male friends, or even a few beers after work with co-workers time to time. Such activities are painted at being engaged in at the expense of women. No similar taboo exists for baby showers, shopping trips or “lunches with the girls”. ( I realizie this one is a stereotype, but there is a valid point here. Things men do with other men are often seen as frivolous)
[/ul]
And the list goes on…Tim Allen had a very good point in his book Don’t Stand Too Close to a Naked Man. He listed all of the options women have today, single, married or in a LTR, Kids, no kids, job, no job and all combinations of the above. He then correctly pointed out that man have the same two options we’ve always had: We can work or we can go to jail.
Forget about the rhetoric, I’m having trouble with the whole basic premise of her column.
I wasn’t aware that “real men” had ever left, frankly.
Courtesy of the Internet Movie Database. Top grossing movies for 1996-2000 in the USA
“Please note that these are the top grossing films that were first released in [the year given]; because they may have made most of their income in a later year, they are probably not the top grossing films for [the] calendar year [given].”
260,031,035 How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
233,630,478 Cast Away (2000)
215,397,307 Mission: Impossible II (2000)
187,670,866 Gladiator (2000)
182,805,123 What Women Want (2000)
182,618,434 The Perfect Storm (2000)
166,225,040 Meet the Parents (2000)
157,299,717 X-Men (2000)
156,997,084 Scary Movie (2000)
155,370,362 What Lies Beneath (2000)
431,065,444 Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
293,501,675 The Sixth Sense (1999)
245,823,397 Toy Story 2 (1999)
205,399,422 Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
171,383,253 The Matrix (1999)
171,085,177 Tarzan (1999)
155,247,825 The Mummy (1999)
152,149,590 Runaway Bride (1999)
140,530,114 The Blair Witch Project (1999)
140,015,224 Stuart Little (1999)
216,119,491 Saving Private Ryan (1998)
201,573,391 Armageddon (1998)
176,483,808 There’s Something About Mary (1998)
162,792,677 A Bug’s Life (1998)
161,487,252 The Waterboy (1998)
144,156,464 Doctor Dolittle (1998)
141,153,686 Rush Hour (1998)
140,459,099 Deep Impact (1998)
136,023,813 Godzilla (1998)
135,014,968 Patch Adams (1998)
600,779,824 Titanic (1997)
250,147,615 Men in Black (1997)
229,074,524 The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
181,395,380 Liar Liar (1997)
172,888,056 Air Force One (1997)
147,637,474 As Good As It Gets (1997)
138,339,411 Good Will Hunting (1997)
126,805,112 My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)
125,332,007 Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
112,225,777 Face/Off (1997)
306,124,059 Independence Day (1996)
241,700,000 Twister (1996)
180,965,237 Mission: Impossible (1996)
153,620,822 Jerry Maguire (1996)
136,448,821 Ransom (1996)
136,182,161 101 Dalmatians (1996)
134,006,721 The Rock (1996)
128,800,000 The Nutty Professor (1996)
124,000,000 The Birdcage (1996)
108,700,000 A Time to Kill (1996)
So, how many of these dealt with “real men”, as in “macho men”, and how many of these dealt with “girly men”, as in “unnecessary men”?
And, Leonardo DiCaprio was only in one of these movies (it only seems like he was everywhere), so it seems rather ditsy to blame it all on him.
We have always had “boy bands”, and I don’t remember anyone blaming New Kids on the Block or Hansen for “the decline of the Real Man”. We have always had “Girl Power” singers and female bands, too, and I don’t remember anyone blaming Mariah Carey or TLC for “the decline of the Real Man”.
And if these manifestations ARE directly tied to the decline of “Real Men”, then huccome they’re stronger than ever? I mean, if she’s right, then we ought to see a sharp decline in boy bands and Girl Power singers. But lookie here, it’s Shakira, just getting started on her 15 minutes, and there’s O-Town, they’ve still got about 8 minutes to go. Shouldn’t they both be on their way out?
Pish tosh. Manifestly yet another conservative columnist is demonstrably, if not an actual “ass hat”, then at least a twit.
As far as I know, the only prerequisite for being a “real man” is having a penis. Everything else is pretty much optional.
Weirddave,
I agree with your examples as being some injustices towards men, but I don’t think that was the point of the article. She was talking about men not being ‘manly’ anymore. I’m still trying to figure out what her definition of a ‘real man’ is.
It was a poorly written article and she didn’t seem to get her point across effectively.
Maybe my reading comprehension is somewhat lacking, but I read this:
as the basic premise of the column.
I gotta jump in with most of the guys here. I agreed with much of the article, and there’s no way she’s advocating a wife beatin’, beer drinkin’, hard livin’ man as the archetypal male for the 21st century. Why all the fuss? Yes, men have gotten the short end of the stick for the last few years, it’s true.
Honestly Guinastasia, I think you just get bored being all alone with no nice, clean cut conservative friends to fulfill your life and so you go looking for an easy mark to slam. Perhaps you should join a LA group in your area. It’s okay. You can do it. Just practice in from of the mirror a few hundred times a day until it feels right…“Hi. My name is Guinastasia and I’m a Liberal”.
Once you’ve gotten it out of your system, we’ll welcome you with open arms into the VRWC. Honest we will.
I’m sorry, but I really can’t accept this supposition as true. If individuals are left to define themselves we would have societal chaos. Only in extremely wealthy countries like the United States is the notion of individual self-definition even contemplated and taken seriously. Try telling a Cuban/Mexican/Ugandan they can “be whatever they want to be” and they’ll probably laugh. Their reply might sound something like “sure, as long as what I want to be is not something that would cause my family to disown me, my friends to beat me, or the government to throw me in jail. That narrows the options to…what I am right now.”
**
You assume that just because men have these things (and I’m not admitting that everything you’ve said is true by saying this) that therefore they DO have “power” (whatever that is) or a “voice” (ditto).
Is there a National Organization for Men? Is there a “Mr.” magazine? Is there? Hell, even organizations like the Elks and Boy Scouts, which were intended to be Male only have been the subject of lawsuits designed to FORCE them to allow women. I could go on and on in this vein.
**
Her point was that this was a film about two MEN, a film that MEN traditionally enjoyed, not women. Changing it for “non-traditional football markets” pretty much removes the original’s reason for being.
**
Just what is a “woman’s issue” or a “woman’s perspective”? Who ever decided women’s views or perspective were so radically diferent from the population at large that they needed their own category? Are women so special or such aliens that they need/require/deserve to be dealt with on a basis seperate from the rest of humanity?
And who says women are more sensitive? That’s just one more feminist invention, like the notion of female “oppression” and the “glass ceiling.” Not to ignite a fire storm, but for every female example of those two things(most of which are anecdotal or very colored by politics), I could find two men who had it just as bad or worse.
I think the comparison of this mode of thinking to a disease is very apt. It has definitely done damage to men, by making it seem that women as a group deserve more or more special attention than men do, when in fact they don’t. Women today in the United States have more legally protected rights and privileges than woman anywhere else in the WORLD, indeed more than women of any other nation in HISTORY.
But I guess that’s just not good enough, is it?
ARRRRGH! THIS ERKS ME TO DEATH! The lady has a valid point! And I don’t think shes advocating wife beating. I know I am personaly tired of being made to feel guilty for acting like a typical man does as Weirddave points out.
BTW Weirddave you took the words right ou of my mouth. Great post!
The most serious flaw in the entire column is that she is ranting against the remake of “Brian’s Song” when she obviously has seen neither the original movie nor the remake and knows absolutely nothing about the story.
Brian’s Song was the original weepie, a three-hankie movie eminently suitable for Lifetime, in spite of the fact that it starred supposedly “Real” men James Caan and Billy Dee Wiliams. Every reviewer I have read this week discussing the two films talks about how he (they were all male) melted into a puddle of tears during the original film. Brian’s Song was the movie that legitimized that T.V. movie because it was an epic drama that appealed to both men and women.
Male Reviewers are praising the remake because it is every bit as poignant and tearjerking as the original. The addition of more of the wives’ story has been said to add depth to the new version, but it does not turn the movie into “another annoying damsel-in-distress movie-of-the-week”. The first Brian’s Song was the original “disease-of-the-week” movie. No one ever called it a macho sports movie. And in the new version, to quote John Carman’s review from the San Francisco Chronicle, “tears are jerked all over again.”
Brian’s Song was not remade to tell the women’s story. It was remade to retell, apparently quite successfully, a classic weepie.
Schlussel would make a better case about the emasculation of the media if she didn’t pick such an obviously inaccurate example. I happen to think that Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo were real men because they had real feelings which they were not afraid to express. It was true back in 1971, when I first saw the scenes in which Gale cries for his football teammate, and it’s still true today.
I know. I was just thinking that we should go to the woods, wear buckskins, give ourselves manly animal names, bang on drums, scream a lot, and kill our own fish for food.
Marc
PS: My manly animal name is Panda.
I prefer Finch, myself. But, dammit, I’m a manly finch!
I’ve always liked the Flatulent Shrew
or was that my Wu-Tang name?
What Wierd Dave said. Nice post, Dave.
Additionally, I’d like to second Schlessel’s point that men in popular culture (or at least pop culture that markets itself to women) do indeed seem to be portrayed as “buffoons and blithering idiots” in some circles.
I haven’t seen the columnist’s specific “Oprah” examples, but I can’t even begin to count all times I’ve seen blatent male-bashing in sit-coms, whereas, if the target of the humor were Jews or Blacks or even women, it would be unbelievably offensive. But somehow it’s okay to target men if it’s done by women…?
I’ve even been out & about with groups of female friends, and at some point they begin swapping ‘dumb men’ jokes in front of me. When this happens, I’ve tried not to take it personally, but I’m really stunned by the insensitivity. Would these same women swap ‘lazy nigger’ or ‘greedy jew’ jokes? Of course not. But for some reason men are an acceptable target.
Both traditional masculinity and femininity have good points and bad points. The world doesn’t need women who spend all their time swooning. We do need compassion. Likewise, the world doesn’t need men who do nothing but belch and cuss and drink their own weight in beer. We’ll need strength and courage as long as there’s evil to be fought.
Doesn’t anyone read Tom Clancy novels but me?
Maybe I’ve been reading the wrong magazines, but I’ve missed this. Certainly the consensus among the center-left commentators and publications I tend to read has for some time been that two parents are a hell of a lot better than one - and that while dumping on single moms just for being single moms is wrongheaded, it’s not the sort of life one should choose.
Since much of the right-of-center world was until recently actively vilifying single motherhood, it’s hard for me to see where or when ‘society’, or anything close, was glorifying single motherhood.
This one’s slipped past my radar as well. Maybe I just don’t watch enough TV.
We guys can be single, married, or in a LTR; have kids or no kids. Some women do have the luxury of not having to work, but it’s not exactly a universal option for them. But you’re right that we guys almost never have that choice.
OTOH, you remember the Springsteen song that starts off:
I’ve got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack,
Went out for a ride and I never went back
Whether it’s societal or genetic, this is an option that the more than occasional man avails himself of, but almost no women do. A lot of single moms didn’t choose that lifestyle; it was chosen for them. The law may catch up with guys like that eventually, but it can’t make them work and provide meaningful support if they don’t want to. Once you get into the world of parenthood when you didn’t really want to be there, none of the options are really that good. But women really have one option in that situation: to raise the kids, come what may. So on the whole, it’s hard to see that life gives them better choices than it gives to us.
Hopefully somebody gets the reference…
Sam
Lizard, my man, I could go on and on about your post, but I don’t have the time or inclination to do so. There’s only one sentence I want to ask you about:
Underlines mine.
What exactly would “the population at large” consist of? Men, and…? Dogs? Cats? Chimps? Aliens?
What you are actually saying here, whether you intended to or not, is that the * male * perspective should be good enough for “everybody”, in other words, women.
Well, when women and men are the same, in every imaginable respect, perhaps the male perspective will be representative of the female. Til then, please get over thinking that “the population at large”, which is men AND women (more of the latter, actually) is represented by the * male * perspective.
Stoid
(who also never uses the term “man” or “mankind” unless she means to refer exclusively to people with penises. “Humanity” will do nicely, thank you.)
[nitpick]
Remove the word “epic” and replace it with “melo”, and I’ll agree. “Reds”, “The Godfather Trilogy” “The Last Emperor” were epic dramas. I was gonna say “Gone with the Wind” was an epic drama, but then I realized it was actually both: an epic melodrama.
[/nitpick]