This article appeared a while back at The Good Men Project - well said. Men and masculinity are in a transitional period right now as we try to break free from the hegemony of "manliness." It looks messy, it looks confused, and it probably looks like we are getting all wrong to a lot of people, not least of which any single woman looking for a male partner.
As men, we need to figure this out for ourselves and among ourselves - which is not to say that we do not want or need input and support from women - we do. But what we do NOT need is women telling us how to figure it out or how we are all a mess. Not helpful.
Read the whole article.How the Media Are All Wrong About Men
March 15, 2011
By
Amid a wave of vicious attacks against men, Alex Heard uncovers the tricks certain journalists are using to make guys look bad.
During a book tour last fall, I had a chance to share a few drinks with roughly a dozen law-school students—half male, half female—at a top university in Virginia. And though I hate to say it, here goes: the young men were smarter and more driven than the young women, who came off like sorority lightweights auditioning for Legally Blonde IV. The men wanted to talk about the law and history. The women wanted to slam tequila and talk about cities that offer “good hook-up potential” during summer internships.
Sadly, to hear professors tell it, law schools are stuffed with “quota babes” like these, who are admitted to adjust the enrollment imbalances that persist in male-dominated fields such as law, engineering, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and computer science. A few years back, Lawrence H. Summers, then president of Harvard, drew fire for suggesting that women’s slow progress in these disciplines may have more to do with “issues of intrinsic aptitude” than the age-old barriers of sexism. The Virginia spectacle left me wondering if he was right, and whether, for their own good, we need to prevent unqualified women from suiting up for roles they can’t fulfill …
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Yeah, right. As I hope you’ve guessed, I’m only pretending to be a sexist idiot. I did meet some law students in Virginia last year, and they were all smart and impressive. But even if the women had been airheads, that wouldn’t be grounds for such sweeping generalizations by me. The enrollment statistics and the Summers quote are real, but everything else is a simulation.
Of? Of the attacks on young men that have become so popular in the media lately. These range in style from mainly-for-laughs (like Julie Klausner’s 2010 book, I Don’t Care About Your Band, a funny memoir ripping the various Star Wars geeks and self-obsessed indie rockers she’s dated), to cutely provocative (Dan Abrams’s new Man Down, which compiles research “proving” that “Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers and Just About Everything Else”), to very serious, like “The End of Men,” Hanna Rosin’s much-discussed article in The Atlantic from last summer, which examined whether a fundamental shift is underway that will lead to men being one down in a women-dominated future. “What if the modern, postindustrial economy is simply more congenial to women than to men?” she chillingly asked.
(Full disclosure. I’ve known Rosin for years and she’s one of my favorite journalists. I propose that any disagreements we have on this subject be settled with a friendly round of a sport men can still compete in: booze pong.)
Between the poles of comedy and gravitas you’ll find every tone you can imagine—satirical, polemical, hysterical—but the common theme goes like this: America’s young men are in serious trouble. Judging by everything from undergraduate enrollment rates to middle-management employment statistics, they’re starting to lag behind women in all ways, embarrassing themselves and the nation and bringing shame to their moms and dads, who now wish they’d had only daughters.
Too many of these bleary slackers refuse to grow up and exit the video-game pleasure wombs they’ve carved out in their parents’ basements. Not enough of them are beetling away in college. They’re avoiding marriage and fundamental seriousness. They’re like two-legged wormboys with lizard brains, backward baseball caps, bongs, dongs, remotes, and diapers, who have learned through sly lethargy that they can have everything they want—sex without responsibility, ample booze and pot, World of Warcraft marathons—in an orgy of extended adolescence. Never mind that plenty of women also indulge in drugs, alcohol, and mindless sex, and practice marriage-avoidance well into their 30s. The evidence is in: men are to blame.
“Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo,” Kay S. Hymowitz, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, declared last month in a Wall Street Journal article adapted from her new book Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys. “… Among pre-adults, women are the first sex. They graduate from college in greater numbers (among Americans ages 25 to 34, 34% of women now have a bachelor’s degree but just 27 percent of men), and they have higher GPAs. As most professors tell it, they also have more confidence and drive. These strengths carry women through their 20s, when they are more likely than men to be in grad school and making strides in the workplace.”
Hmm … OK, coupla things. First, all you have to do is look around to realize what exaggerated claptrap that is: good men are not especially hard to find. On this score, Salon performed a valuable public service earlier this month. In response to Hymowitz’s claims, a writer interviewed several men in their 20s, who convincingly refuted the idea that they’re big, lazy babies, or that innocent leisure pursuits automatically carry negative moral weight. “I’m 28 years old and I skateboard,” said a guy named Isaac Fitzgerald, managing editor of an online magazine called The Rumpus. “Is that a little ridiculous? Yes, totally—but I also co-own my own company.”
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