The mental castration of the American male
One of my big pet peeves is what I call the castration of the American male. By this, I mean the penchant in our society for the last, oh, 20 years, to portray everything that is intrinsically male to be negative attributes that need to be cast off.
You can see it everywhere you go; on television, in books and in movies, everything men have a natural bent for is cast in a negative light. On commercials, you see the classic couple, the bumbling, clueless husband, and the condescending, smart wife who "tolerates" his foolery.
Yet nobody seems put out by it. And people wonder why men's values are so all over the map these days.
I think that we would find, if we were to cease the constant assault on the American male psyche, that perhaps men's natural instincts aren't as bad as we are constantly told it is.
For millions of years, being male seemed to work just fine. I really don't think all of our natural urges suddenly became irrelevant.
We ARE naturally competitive. That is behind our drive to achieve, to strive to be better, to be something greater than our parts.
Socially, the drive to be the best is being doused. Everyone gets a trophy these days after the little league game. Everyone's kid has their own bumper sticker about their kid doing such and such at school. But you can't douse a million years of instinct. And when you deny that part of a young man, you don't squash it, you just force it to come out in other ways....ways you as a parent no longer have control over.
You get bullies, delinquents, and boys who grow up having no concept of being able to direct their natural instincts toward something positive...because we tried to deny those instincts' existence.
Of course men want to collect the most "toys." That comes from eons of instincts of providing for their family. Try to squash that, and what you get is men who still have the urge, but no direction. SO when your husband spends the check on a new DVD player instead of something necessary for the household, that's why.
Yes, men are sexually agressive creatures. No, you can't control that for long. Does that mean they are naturally unfaithful? No. It means that when a wife or girlfriend tries to control him via sex, eventually his instincts will kick in and he'll get it from somewhere else. And the better the man, the more opportunities for that "somewhere else" there will be. Hen peck him, and eventually he'll explode.
But usually by the time the American male is maried it's too late. It starts at birth. It starts with parents today jumping on their son for demonstrating natural male instincts without providing another outlet. Yes, you should stop him from beating up another kid in the sandbox and teach him why it's wrong. But that's where most parent's stop. You need to find another outlet for them.
The bitter irony of it all is that women probably suffer more from the castration of the American male than the men do. More and more unsatisfied with their men, but don't know why. Cosmo is telling them everything they do is fine (while also telling them they neeed to lose weight they couldn't possibly lose) and everything you do is wrong. When they get you to see things their way, they can't figure out why they're so irritated with you.
I see couples like this all the time, and it's like nails on a chalkboard.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with being a man. It's what you were born to be.
You can see it everywhere you go; on television, in books and in movies, everything men have a natural bent for is cast in a negative light. On commercials, you see the classic couple, the bumbling, clueless husband, and the condescending, smart wife who "tolerates" his foolery.
Yet nobody seems put out by it. And people wonder why men's values are so all over the map these days.
I think that we would find, if we were to cease the constant assault on the American male psyche, that perhaps men's natural instincts aren't as bad as we are constantly told it is.
For millions of years, being male seemed to work just fine. I really don't think all of our natural urges suddenly became irrelevant.
We ARE naturally competitive. That is behind our drive to achieve, to strive to be better, to be something greater than our parts.
Socially, the drive to be the best is being doused. Everyone gets a trophy these days after the little league game. Everyone's kid has their own bumper sticker about their kid doing such and such at school. But you can't douse a million years of instinct. And when you deny that part of a young man, you don't squash it, you just force it to come out in other ways....ways you as a parent no longer have control over.
You get bullies, delinquents, and boys who grow up having no concept of being able to direct their natural instincts toward something positive...because we tried to deny those instincts' existence.
Of course men want to collect the most "toys." That comes from eons of instincts of providing for their family. Try to squash that, and what you get is men who still have the urge, but no direction. SO when your husband spends the check on a new DVD player instead of something necessary for the household, that's why.
Yes, men are sexually agressive creatures. No, you can't control that for long. Does that mean they are naturally unfaithful? No. It means that when a wife or girlfriend tries to control him via sex, eventually his instincts will kick in and he'll get it from somewhere else. And the better the man, the more opportunities for that "somewhere else" there will be. Hen peck him, and eventually he'll explode.
But usually by the time the American male is maried it's too late. It starts at birth. It starts with parents today jumping on their son for demonstrating natural male instincts without providing another outlet. Yes, you should stop him from beating up another kid in the sandbox and teach him why it's wrong. But that's where most parent's stop. You need to find another outlet for them.
The bitter irony of it all is that women probably suffer more from the castration of the American male than the men do. More and more unsatisfied with their men, but don't know why. Cosmo is telling them everything they do is fine (while also telling them they neeed to lose weight they couldn't possibly lose) and everything you do is wrong. When they get you to see things their way, they can't figure out why they're so irritated with you.
I see couples like this all the time, and it's like nails on a chalkboard.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with being a man. It's what you were born to be.
posted by Dark Lord at 7:36 PM
7 Comments:
This sounds very familiar, but you're no less wrong this time either. We have gone from "Father Knows Best" to Homer Simpson.
Yea your right on this one Ive
been through it. Truth be told
its a damn if you do damned if you
dont situation for us.
In which case I do whichever works for me. Then again I can be a real bastard when I decide to.
Speaking from a woman's perspective, WOW! Great information that really makes me stop and think about what has contributed to the problems with our young men, especially the minority men. Thanks for the insight!
Castration of the American male? How about castration of the male. Period. On a personal level, I watched by father do it to my brother; a mother do it to her son. Why doesn't that come under the umbrella of mental abuse? As far as I'm concerned, portraying castrating behaviour, by anyone, especially for public consumption is wrong at every level.
62 year old lady who is so grateful that we don't have to procreate asexually! Men and women. Yin and yang. Perfect.
Excellent article. The most interesting thing to notice is that most guys in American culture are actually clueless that it happened to them.
Within a social group, a fight for power ensues. Once the strongest individual secured power, it is in his interest to not allow those he subdued, to rise against him. The lower rank males have to be emasculated, otherwise their natural impulse is to challenge the guy at the top, non-stop.
To perpetuate its position above, the patriarchate has to emasculate the males below.
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