Figleaf is writing, again, about the constraints of contemporary American “masculinity,” and how it is harmful to men and society as a whole. This is interesting enough on its own, but especially in light of the “online bullying” discussions, and the ways in which the blogosphere seems to turn garden variety assholes into full-on hate monkeys… well, this is quite interesting.
Ten, maybe fifteen years ago I was profoundly influenced by an article in The Atlantic Monthly magazine about the culture of the adolescent boy. The article (now either lost in the ether and/or banished forever behind their subscription-only firewall) pointed out that because early adolescent boys have tremendous spending power compared to other demographics there’s natural market pressure to a) cater to them and b) encourage extension of that pre-adult period as long as possible.
Okay… keep going…
In strictly economic terms it’s a tough argument to refute. Very young men tend to live at home where their obligatory expenses are negligible, have quite a lot of free time, have surprisingly few responsibilities, and therefore while not exactly high-income never the less tend to spend whatever they do have on discretionary items. If I were in business I suppose I’d covet, and coddle, that demographic as well.
In nearly any other terms, The Atlantic article pointed out, it’s a bit of a catastrophe both for the young men themselves and for society as a whole. The issue being that young men of that age are maximally alienated. Physically and, for the most part, mentally they approach adult capability but, largely because they’re still emotionally, hormonally, and experientially immature, they tend to be tightly controlled by their elders and nearly powerless. The perfectly understandable result is a lot of anxiety, insecurity, and frustration that, when left unchanneled, is expressed with sarcasm, passive-aggression, extremely rich fantasies, physical distractions (including drugs, alcohol, sex, music), status-seeking posturing, and aggressive game playing. They tend to have enormous, though largely untested, self-confidence that manifests in often-aggravated mixtures of “nobody listens to me” and “if everyone would just listen to me.” They tend to have contempt or wariness for those they don’t perceive as being in the same boat they are. And intense affinity for, and loyalty towards, they believe are. Oh yeah, and they revel in opportunities to shock, surprise, or one-up adults and other authority figures.
So there’s your “identity politics.” And, about those self-declared radio shock jocks (and their online brethren, by extension)? It’s not difficult to see where this is going, now…
Enter Don Imus, the 70-year-old man who based his career, and his popularity, on pretensions of arrested development. The man who’s remark about the women of Rutgers was offensive not only for its unforgivable racism, its gratuitous sexism, and it’s uncivil diminishment of athletic accomplishment but also its sheer, pointless abdication of masculine maturity.
The problem with Imus’s remark, like way too many similar remarks over the years, was not its utterance but its origin in pre-adult male jealousy in the face of that which he believes he himself could not accomplish. The Rutgers athletes had advanced to the NCAA national championship, something Imus, not an athlete himself, did not and could not. Reaching into the standard toolbag of the alienated and resentful he sought for an insult that would, in his eyes, most diminish his guest in his eyes and those of his “market demographic.” And found what turned out to be a perfect one in the sense that it deeply cut those at whom he threw it, shocked and outraged responsible people, got him “sent to the principle’s office,” and earned him sorrowfully approving murmurs from his admiring ostensible peers about “going a little to far this time.”
Now, how does the Duke lacrosse team figure into this, as well?
And meanwhile look at the world he and his maturity-challenged cohorts have wrought through the lens of the Duke lacrosse team. The unsupervised boys Imus strives to both recruit and emulate semi-surreptitiously rounded up a couple of kegs and a couple of strippers and behaved like little boys getting away with something — not least because in a world populated by Imus’s, Sterns, Letterman’s, George Walker Bush’s, and sundry athletes and entertainers you can count the number of responsible public adult-male role models on the fingers of one mitten.
Real adults can accept when someone declines their overture in the presence of their peers without losing face or otherwise feeling diminished. Real adults can distinguish the difference between a stripper and a prostitute, not least by asking clearly and by insuring the clarity of the reply. Real sexual adults don’t think they have to sneak around or cut corners on their prospective partners to have sex. Even if Don Imus reinforces the impression that men can’t “get any” unless they do.
And to bring it all back around to real adult sex, since that’s the name of the blog, after all…
For that matter, real men don’t “get any,” they don’t “hit that,” they don’t “score,” and they don’t “get lucky.” Real men don’t “get a piece” of a chick, a MILF, a babe, a coed, a “nappy headed ‘ho.” Real adult men, “even” unmarried men, fuck other adults eye to eye, belly to belly or belly to back with nothing else on their mind at the moment but the enjoyment that can be shared, not taken or given, between equals.
The status quo for masculinity does no service to the genuine boys of Duke, the geriatric “boy” that is Don Imus, or the staggering number of men who imagine adulthood in the form of “Larry ‘Bud Melman” is the only alternative to the shameful destructiveness of extended juvenility.
A 10 out of 10, sir.
So, you know when feminists talk about how feminism is helpful to women, men, and society? Well, here’s a shining example. If you’re not reading Figleaf’s blog, you should be, because it’s A-List in the actual meritocratic sense. I wish there were more men blogging about the question(s) of what it means to be a man, and how/why that definition should be changing.
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