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Awareness -> RE: do you think society has made it hard for men to be real men? (6/16/2011 3:35:43 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: texastgirl
i mean used to when a man would open a door or pull out a chair for a woman it was called being a gentleman. now if he does it, hes called a pig or chauvinist. when a woman wants to be obedient to a man, society looks at her like shes not a real woman or something. a man takes control over his woman, and society looks at him like he must be forcing her or she must be a victim. so do you think society has made it hard for men to be real men and take control?
The problem here is you're not really asking a question so much as you're stating a position then asking people to validate that.
What you're referring to is essentially gender politics. Society is essentially a battleground between varying disparate groups vying for power. The advent of feminism saw a claim being staked along gender lines and much of the activity since then has been controlling the frame of the debate and attempting to win the moral war in the hearts and minds of the public.
This is complicated by the fact that the gay community is also doing the same thing. Then throw in the various gender stratification groups such as the trans community and the whole issue starts to become complex, if not downright muddled.
Key to decoding all this is to fundamentally recognise that what people do when they frame things as being "right" or "wrong" is essentially strike a blow in the battle to gain power. And this is essentially what these movements are. In many ways, that's all they are. Maneuvers designed to advance the power of a given group in the complex societies in which we live.
The stark truth of all this is that what we think of as "rights" are simply those things which the strong allow the weak to possess. This is always the way in which the world has worked and it is still the way it works. If you want to understand the positioning and posturing of various interest groups, the key issue is to remember that what they're doing is seeking power - and the various justifications they use for why they should be allotted the power they currently do not possess are simple gambits designed to persuade, influence and manipulate.
One common technique is to suggest that the reason they don't currently possess power is due to a mental or moral defect in the community at large - or in the individuals or groups which directly oppose them. This has to be realised for what it is - simply another tactic.
If there's one thing which should level the playing field in your mental evaluation of such things, it's to remember that no single group possesses the moral high ground on this. Every single group which claims to be oppressed always asserts a moral superiority which suggests they would never be guilty of the kinds of prejudice which they suffer. And they are always wrong. Once a group gains power, they simply do not wish to relinquish it under any circumstances.
For instance, Anne Heche described the bigoted response she received from some sections of the gay community when she entered into a heterosexual relationship after breaking up with Ellen Degeneres. She was gay.... and then she wasn't. This infuriated some people because it didn't play into the ideological party line that being gay was not a choice.
So. Why do I mention this? Because ultimately all of this shit is simply a backdrop for how a man carries himself. And the real man you're describing is one who's aware of the social context in which he operates, but doesn't let it define him or his reactions. And ultimately, it doesn't matter because human beings are social creatures who respond to the strength, confidence and dominance a man displays just by being who he is.
So, I'll hold a door open for a feminine woman because she's weaker than I am and she's feminine and doing so is actually a form of social interaction between us. With the right woman, she enjoys the courtesy, enjoys feeling feminine and we each go our way with a little bit more of a spring in our step.
If a chick is a bodybuilder or truck-driver then I wouldn't bother. If she's rocking six-pack abs or a pair of guns bigger than mine, there's no need, nor does it constitute a valuable social interaction. The feminists who scream at men who display them this courtesy are simply failures at social interaction. I can't recall a woman reacting so poorly, but generally I laugh at such antics, because that shit is funny and ironic as hell.
Society doesn't make things harder for men by applying social pressure at an individual and constant level. What it currently does do is attempt to emasculate them by teaching them to be ashamed of those attributes which make them masculine. The damage is done during formative years when young boys should be learning from men. Instead, they're fed socially engineered nonsense designed to advance the power of specific groups.
The irony, of course, is that young women are absolutely sick to death of it. Young women are crying out for men. The main reason old men such as me get so much play is because we're such a stark contrast to the average young women's male peers. I hear the same complaints from young women over and over again. Their male peers are spineless, indecisive, lack sexual aggression and don't know how to deal with the challenges of life. These same young women express a desire for a 50's household or a curiousity with the whole "taken in hand" movement simply because it represents the chance of encountering actual men rather than boys who simply haven't grown up.
Societies swing between various extremes like a pendulum. Some like to characterise some swings of the pendulum as "progress", when in reality, that's simply a gambit designed to normalise the perception of their particular power grab. It'll probably swing back - heck, the era of the retrosexual is in play. It'll be interesting to see how long that lasts.
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