I didn’t get it, and I haven’t got it for most of the time. I’m only just getting it – the faux-masculine shibboleths that I’m expected to observe, in order to be ‘one of the guys’.
Especially the degradation of women as rite of passage.
Don’t get me wrong…
I’m nobody’s knight in shining armour (I think this will be the last time I repeat this for some time), and I don’t believe in chivalry towards women – chivalry, as opposed to decency, assumes that women are frail objects to be protected like delicate porcelain in a world they’re not equipped to deal with. Women are no such thing.
I’ve got an interest in this. If pseudo, and actual misogyny, are used as defining criteria for what it is to be masculine, then I consider that an imposture. I don’t want that group identity lumbered on me, and moreover, I’m willing, if imposed upon, to fight for my stake in masculine culture to the exclusion of other men.
Gentlemen, if you’re going to make an asshole out of yourself in the first instance, I’m not going to take much notice when you make squeals of indignation, when you get a little comeuppance. That is unless, I find it justifiable, useful, and entertaining, to laugh at you.
Seriously though, some men really shit me. The things that some of you expect me to take on board as normal, or healthy, or unappealing-but-otherwise-not-rebarbative.
And so Bruce begins.
I’ve wondered about this. I’ve seen the way seemingly “nice” guys act when they’re around each other. They don’t act like that when it’s one on one with me, but get them in a group and all bets seem to be off. When questioned later about it, they deny feeling that way, and yet, in those instances when I’ve been present, I’ve never heard any of them call the others out for sexist language and outright misogyny. And I’ve wondered, doesn’t it bother them? If they say they’re not like that, how can they let that stuff slide?
And I wonder about the guys who don’t feel this way and what going along to get along does to them deep inside.
Bruce gives me a bit of a window. Better, he tells me what he’s going to do about it.
