Masculinism

Throughout my life, I’ve heard a lot of the idea that girls have no self-respect anymore and boys have no idea how to respect girls anymore. I’ve recently seen a lot of posts in different places about teaching boys good old-fashioned manners and making sure that girls learn what true respect looks like and that they deserve nothing less than a gentleman as a partner. All that is true of course, but I think we’re ignoring a key component of the problem.

I’m not a male, so I can’t speak as one, I can only speak by my observations. Actually, I think I can make some pretty good observations as a woman because I can see what the expectations on men are from an outside perspective, in part by looking at what I’m expected to be and not to be as a woman. I find that a lot of the qualities that I’m not expected to be are the expectation because they are defined in our culture as “male traits”. And I don’t know if there’s anything more insulting to a man in our culture than saying, “You throw like a girl. You scream like a girl. You cry like a girl.”

Like a girl. What an insult…to us girls, that is. To us women.

It’s kind of interesting. It occurred to me that through these statements, men are primarily defining themselves as “not women”. As if it all starts with us. As if they must find some way to be set apart from us and by doing so gain some higher respect that we, as women, could supposedly never attain. These “like a girl” statements are often uttered in an instance when some male has not lived up to the expectation of “toughness” that is imposed upon them. Too cowardly? You must be a girl. Too weak? You must be a girl. Ouch. Really?

So yes, women are often belittled and insulted even through casual comments like the ones mentioned above. It’s just ingrained into the cultural mindset. I often think that this does not get enough attention. I lived with a lot of misogyny in different environments around me while growing up. It is an important issue. I cannot stress the importance if it enough. I just wish more people would understand the oppression on women that still goes on in the world and I haven’t personally dealt with even nearly the worst of the world. But, let’s turn the conversation around for the remainder of the conversation…

What about women treating men with respect? Many want so badly to change our culture’s view of gender. But take one particular issue that we are battling right now: the sexualisation of women. I get it, not just women are made to look like just sexual objects. Men are treated like sexual objects too. But first of all, does saying that fix the problem? Does evening it out by saying it happens to both genders just make all this sexualisation okay? I think not. Secondly, really? Do you really so more sexualized images of men? How often do you see an ad on the side of your screen of a scantily clad male apparently looking to give you a “hot night” versus ads like that featuring a scantily clad female? How often do you receive junk mail telling you that a man wants to have sex with you versus a woman? I’m a straight woman and I get all that junk mail…

Honestly, I’m tired of hearing that whole, “men are made into sexual objects too” thing. That’s no excuse, and it’s not even true to the same extent.

Basically, women’s worth in our culture is highly based on how beautiful they are and sexually attractive they are. To the extent that “beautiful” and “sexually attractive” have to mean the same thing. And men’s worth is not only, but also highly based on whether or not they’ve indulged themselves on the banquet of women that are supposedly set before them to gorge on. It’s interesting that when a girl just wants to have sex, people call her a slut, but when a guy just wants to have sex, people are like, “yeah, no duh.”

A lot of feminists, or at least those that call themselves that, try to combat the above thinking by creating a sexual revolution. Women should be free to have as much sex as they want as well as men. I mean, why are women treated like sluts all the time when they try to act on their animal instincts all the time the way that men do? How dare anyone expect more of them? Right? Ugh! This misogynist culture…

I look at this much differently. In some ways, though it is degrading to be viewed as a sexual object that is only meant to be consumed, at least we’re not treated as if we don’t have any control over ourselves the way that men are. I think maybe porn is changing that a bit with women performing gross acts on screen while pretending to like it (I don’t see how that cannot change your perceptions and expectations of women, but I really don’t know a whole lot about that so I won’t talk a lot about that.) But even so, women are still usually more often treated as if they should have more self-respect than to throw themselves at someone and try to get them to have sex with them like ravenous sexual animals. They’re treated as if they should know better, like they’re higher than that.

Men on the other hand are expected to crave sex like ravenous sexual animals. To not be able to say “no” to a naked woman in front of them. It is assumed that they will try and get into a girls’ pants and that it is up to the girl to say “no”. Now, yes, that is unfair to the girl. So unfair. But I see it from another angle as well. Even if many men don’t realize it, that must be so degrading to be told that you are nothing more than a weak-willed, instinctual being with no other desire greater than to “get laid”. I’ve had so many douche-bags of men say “yep, that’s how men are,” and it’s frustrating. It’s very similar to the fact that the expectations on women to be beautiful are over the top and extreme, and yet women keep trying. It seems that most women want to be called beautiful and get the most attention competitively even at the expense of their own natural, genuine beauty. And many men want to have as much sex as they can at the expense of their character. But hey, they get away with it. It’s expected of men that they treat women like shit or that they’d at least be tempted to not treat women with respect, and if they aren’t tempted, they must not be much of a man.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, women, I get that you want to be irresistibly beautiful, but would you prefer a guy that couldn’t resist you, or a guy who had enough self-respect to say “no”? You have to see the role you’re playing in all of this. Not that acknowledging our beauty is wrong, it’s not. Not that putting attention into our appearance is wrong, because it isn’t necessarily. But using men in that way to build up our egos by seeing if we’re attractive enough to snag a glance? Not okay. We have to teach girls that beauty isn’t everything and that it’s only a small fraction of who we are as women.

And men, you deserve better.

I hope you realize it, and I hope you have or soon discover the self-respect enough to refuse to be manipulated by a culture that tells you that you don’t have a brain to think for yourself. Even in a culture that says you’re stronger, more capable, deserve higher wages, have far more positions of power, etc…even still…you are pawns…you are not respected. And in a culture that does not respect you, please learn to respect yourselves. And teach your sons to do the same.

Respecting others is so often correlated to how much you respect yourself. You have to believe you are made of finer stuff than to treat others like garbage. You have to believe you have something greater to offer.