I am not a Man Hater. I'm a Knuckle-Dragging-Moron Hater. There's a difference.
::BeginRant::
I’m going to start this off
with a few words of support for men who date/marry empowered women:
We love you. You are awesome. However, the shit that
you are served by your fellow men after they meet your girlfriend, (and
discover that she is superior to them in every way), totally sucks, and
we appreciate you even more for the fact that you stand up to it.
The other day, I witnessed
this behavior, in all its asinine glory, and it spurred me to write this rant.
I was spending some time
with my SO and his male friends. My SO is a remarkably evolved
man, and supports me in whatever I do. He even goes to NOW meetings with me. I
know you Heartless Bitches are probably thinking, "Wow! - That is really great! His friends should emulate him so
they can meet and date awesome feminist women!"
WRONG.
Apparently, (as evinced by
my SO’s friends), many men regard those who have transcended the Cro-Magnon
state enough to be seen in public with, and (gasp) loved and appreciated by a
Heartless Bitch, as inherently ‘pussy whipped’, weak, or otherwise less of a
"MAN". Men do this to themselves! They perpetuate the myth that by acting like
anything other than a 50’s throwback, a man is somehow emasculated, even though
the fabulous HB he is with treats him in no such manner. They refuse to see or accept that a Modern man (aka "one that has pulled his ass up out of the swamp"):
- Respects himself AND his wonderful HB companion.
This means that there is no retarded power struggle to figure out who is
in charge, because he embraces the fact that you share responsibility for decision making.
- Knows that he doesn’t need to be insecure that
said HB may earn more money or be more competent/successful in some arena. He
knows that she is with him because she WANTS to be and that she sees him
as an equal - not as something less or more than she is. He doesn't see relationships as some kind of competition.
- Knows that he can count on his HB girlfriend/wife to be there for him,
and vice versa. Thusly, when his
idiot friends tell him that she is emasculating him by having said qualities,
the MODERN MAN can tell them to fuck off because he knows he’s got it good.
(I loved the fact that when my boyfriend was taunted by his idiot friends about me being
a "sugar momma", he laughingly responded with "Don’t you wish you had it so good?")
Unfortunately, you see this
type of Neanderthal taunting crap all the time - men convincing other men that
to be "out-done" by one’s SO in any arena which is traditionally male, is to be humiliated as a man.
If we can make more money than a guy or have a more demanding job, and still see him as an equal, then why do they have an issue with it?
Is it because when the roles are reversed, they don't see women as equals, so they think we will have the same kinds of biases that they do?
Heartless Bitches
everywhere need to reach out to their more cranially-evolved brethren of the XY
persuasion, and let them know that Heartless Bitches APPRECIATE a man who
appreciates them and what they have worked hard to become and represent.
Let the Modern men
out there know that they shouldn’t be ashamed of embracing equality and having
a liberated outlook. Someone needs to let them know that, because clearly their idiot friends aren’t going to.
We are faced with a dilemma:
as long as idiots out there continue to perpetrate and reinforce the "guy has to be in charge" mindset (rather than
embracing the concept that "people in a relationship can be equally strong and
capable"), the gender as a whole will remain trapped in the "one step forward, two steps back"
conundrum and never truly evolve. Men
have become just as indoctrinated by societal expectations and gender roles as
women have, and the effects are just as destructive to both genders.
The correlation within the
male redneck mind between feminism and homophobia is one of the things that
perpetuates this myth. Men seem to think that an attack on their sexuality is a grave insult. By not being an oppressive jackass, a man is often seen by his
peers as being fey, or weak, and therefore sexually inferior or "Gay". It’s ridiculous, but it is pervasive.
To the lesser evolved male, a woman who is successful, intelligent, and
driven is seen as ‘threatening’. Threatening to what? The simplistic
answer is that such a woman is threatening to an insecure man’s sense of
superiority. But the real question here is what creates that need for
superiority, and what can be done about the societal influences that promulgate
it?
There is no easy solution to
this problem.
Too many men derive their
sense of superiority from the fact that that they think they must be needed by
women. The primordial fear instilled by
strong women into the unevolved mind is one that says "If a women don’t need me,
then what good am I? What do I have to offer? How can I control her and the relationship if she doesn't need me?" In the same way that women need to re-think their roles in
society, so too do men. They need to
realize that they have to offer much more to a relationship than a paycheck and jar opener service. They need to stop treating their romantic relationships as competitions. Many of them need to grow up and realize that
they can’t continue to be children in adult bodies and get away with acting like
imbeciles just because they "bring home the bacon". When a man is no longer "needed" for financial or other support,
he has to really grow up and be an adult. He has
to be someone women can love and respect - someone a woman wants to be
with, rather than someone a woman needs. It seems that many men are terrified of this prospect.
This deep-seated insecurity
and immaturity that results in and perpetuates the whole caveman attitude needs to be
recognized and dealt with. As long as women and men continue to
encourage and support immature childish male behavior (as is usually condoned
by the phrase "boys will be boys"), then nothing is going to change. It’s not about wanting to take the fun out of
living - you can have tons of fun and
enjoy life without acting like a self-absorbed 5-year-old ass and/or being lead
around by your dick.
Ironically, it seems that these neanderthal types either
seek out needy, clingy damaged women and then complain about them, or pick the ones that
are utterly subservient and controllable. In any case, they try to find women that they can feel superior to in order to preserve their fragile egos. But as far as I am concerned, those men who
only seek out weak and damaged women are just as weak and damaged themselves,
and thusly ARE NOT MEN - they are boys. And those individuals who pressure
their peers to participate in the same kind of damaged behavior are a cancer on
the face of the rest of MANkind.
I’m fairly certain none of
this rant will actually penetrate the craniums of any knuckle-draggers who
accidentally stumbled on this page, but for the rest of you reading this I challenge you to do your part to change the world - DON’T
condone and perpetuate dysfunctional, insecure male behavior.
Very often women are just as bad as men at buying into and entrenching
these outmoded attitudes. So to start
you on the road to changing the world, here are some words and phrases to
banish from your vocabulary:
"Boys will be Boys"
"Well I guess we know who
wears the pants in the family"
"It's a Guy/Girl thing."
"It’s a man’s job"
"It’s women’s work"
"He’s obviously pussy-whipped"
I know that I, and countless Heartless Bitches everywhere, long
for the day when the mindset of mass male society sees the archetypal MAN as someone who admires and
encourages independent, strong and resourceful women.
I’m done. I just hope I’ve
given you something to think about.
::End Rant::
