this issue is really the main issue on my life for the last oh, 35 to 40 years.
This is a big problem for a lot of guys, not just me.
Perhaps you are familiar with Robert Bly, whose book, IRON JOHN, framed this societal problem back in the 1980s among us quasi men of “how do we become men”. a men’s awareness movement ensued, for guys who felt like they werent really guys.
More recently, “I LOVE YOU MAN”, a movie about a guy looking for a guy friend to be his best man because he only has women friends, and more recently that movie about the friendless dude who hires Kevin hart to round up some male guests for his wedding because he has no friends….i recll other movies in this genre as well..
… This issue is in the air, it’s in the culture. Women seem to know how to knit tight networks more efficiently than the lame portion of the men flock do.
i’m like paul rudd in I LOVE YOU MAN, the guy who suddenly desperately realizes men dont like him. Women generally liked me more, and I thought this was good, but realized indeed that it was a very very very bad sign.
Men need to be accepted by other men. their acceptance by women is not enough. it makes us neurotic. My dad was a nervous wreck. Still, even he had a lot more guy friends, and was “normal” and perceived as normal among the guys he hung out with, who also struck me as normal guys. He smoked cigars, he didn’t talk about weird stuff like me. he never had a doubt that he was a man, a regular man. the thought of him questioning his manhood is inconceivable to me.
So what the hell is my problem? I’m not sure. I think I’ve become a lot more like a regular man, or at least am a better simulation of one that is less identifiable as weird instantly, throught he process of raising 3 boys.
I was very scared to have boys, thinking, shoot, now I’m going to produce yet another generation of neurotic self-conscious males.
Either that, or they will be actual men,a nd will judge me harshly. Dammit. But it hasn’t turned out that way. They are for the most part extraordinarily more normal than me, and their confidence levels are orders of magnitude higher than mine were. Partly the process has brought me along, partly it seems like evidence that maybe I am a normal man, because I have raised young men who seem like regular men. they interact with other male peers not in an awkward way. That fills me with confidence in myself, oddly.
Maybe the problem is women;real men aren’t hungry to have women accept them. They just are accepted by men and therefore acceptable to women. trying to win women’s favor is unattractive to other men.
Ultimately, it is boy against girls, and I am guilty of not being fully on the boys team.
it seems so profoundly wrong to me to have women weigh in on how guys should act when they are together. THAT IS THE PROBLEM. I mean, imagine the reverse. What if I said, hey, I don’t like the way young women interact in sororities, or women’s chamber of commerce groups. I think you should behave differently. Youre promoting bad attitudes toward men. Your speech patterns are bitchy or mean. They would tell me to shut the hell up, right? they would say they need a place to be safe from the partiarchy or that they have been abused so long by men over history that a man is in no position to judge.
Because, they’d say, men are bad, it’s men’s fault the world is messed up, girl power.
And Ultimately, throughout my sad little feminized life, I think I bought that line… and if you believe that narrative, regular guys are NOT gonna like you.
So I am still guilty of being a dyed in the wool feminist. thats who i am. Women still like me and are most of my friends. I hate that. but it’s probably too late for me to change. I’m just glad i didnt make more of me.
