|
|
|
« Putting People First | Main | Helicopter Defense in Iraq » November 06, 2003On FeminizationKim du Toit (one of the many good bloggers I don't read often simply because I've run out of time in the day) has penned an interesting rant titled The Pussification of the Western Male. As might be assumed from his title, Kim is not overly thrilled with the way men and boys are portrayed in popular media and treated by the public education system, among other things. (Read it all, as no synopsis is going to get everything right, and it certainly can't capture the flavor of Kim's prose.) I won't get into all of Kim's arguments, but I will toss a few of my own thoughts into the mix. I'm not a particularly manly man myself; I don't own any guns, the only sport I really enjoy is baseball, I don't hunt or fish, and I own very few power tools. But I have found myself becoming more and more annoyed the past few years with the misandry that seems to permeate this country. (Although one advantage to being a soldier is that such issues are far less common.) It's perfectly acceptable to depict things happening to men that would be unthinkable if they happened to women, for example. How many people would have considered the breakup scene in "Jerry Maguire" as funny if Jerry had cold-cocked his fiancee after she called off the wedding? I can't see anything funny about the idea of a man slugging a woman, yet the reverse is utterly unobjectionable to Hollywood. If that's annoying, however, what's happening to boys in schools borders on criminal. Boys and girls are different. I can't prove that with science, but I've got more than enough experience observing both genders to make the statement with confidence. Better still, ask any parent with boys and girls, and you'll be left with no doubt that they develop differently. For boys, running and playing and roughousing are integral parts of their development. (Hell, men are the same way. When my battalion plays sports, we lay some hits on guys that Junior Seau would envy.) Unfortunately, that requirement makes boys difficult; boys tend to be rambunctious in class because our education methodology plays right into their weaknesses, and so teachers end up disciplining the boys simply because they're acting like boys. That's not good, but today they slap an ADD label on the kids and put them on Ritalin. I'm sure that there are some kids out there who truly do need Ritalin to pay attention in class, but I'm just as sure a sizeable fraction of kids on the drug are dozing through their childhood because their parents and teachers just don't want to deal with their energy. That's great for the adults, but what it is doing to the kids? (Won't somebody please think of the children?) For too long our society marginalized girls. They were taught that their lot in life was to find a husband and make him happy, and to Hell with their own desires. God only knows what that cost us in intellectual capital over the years. Now we're working our way out of that ghetto, but we seem to be determined to create a new one for boys. (See Christian Hoff Sommers' excellent books, Who Stole Feminism? and The War Against Boys for much more on this.) The last thing I want to see is men attempting to break into the sainted status that is granted to victims in our society. The problem here is not that men are victims, but that two major establishments have oriented themselves against men: Hollywood and teachers. Hollywood really doesn't matter, as there remains plenty of male-friendly entertainment out there (Kim rightly cites the film We Were Soldiers as a good example of this). But there is certainly some work to do about the American educational establishment. Sadly, we still face a monopoly on education in this country, otherwise the stance of public teachers would be far less of an issue. Therefore, the best means of resolving this issue is to break the public school monopoly on education and allow the market to take over. (Yes, easier said than done.) Feminization really isn't the issue. Some parents clearly would prefer to at least attempt it, after all. The problem is that people today don't really get a choice. Give them one, and the feminization issue will fade into rightful obscurity. UPDATE (11/7/03): Jane Galt has some good comments about the portrayal of men in commercials, while Steven den Beste offers his thoughts on why white men are portrayed like morons on TV. Jane is absolutely right that commercials are going to pander to women as long as women are the primary decision-makers for purchases, and it's hard to get overly worked up about them. Besides, as I noted above, it's easy to get Hollywood and ad agencies to change their policies: change your buying habits. As for den Beste, I think he hits the nail on the head. Two of my favorite programs are "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill." Neither of those shows offers a male lead most of us would want to emulate, but the rest of the family is equally dysfunctional. That tends to make all the difference; when everyone's an idiot, it's amusing. When everyone's wise but the male lead, it becomes somewhat less entertaining, at least for me. But there's an easy solution to that; the remote does still come with an off button.Posted at November 6, 2003 04:06 PM
AdvertisersRefrigerator Repair Parts Best Price Cars Account Money Market Detailing Supplies Comment policy |
