THE RISE OF “BLOKE” MAGAZINES, and of TV shows and commercials based on the same worldview, has, as I’ve previously written here, has propagated a new male archetype.
Call it the Proud Creep.
This character type is just as stupid, boorish, and woman-hating as the villain stereotypes in ’70s-’80s feminist tracts, but proclaims these to be somehow positive qualities.
In many ways, it reminds me of the “He-Man Woman-Hater’s Club” schtick in the old Our Gang movie shorts. It’s certainly just as juvenile.
I hereby propose a different archetype of hetero masculinity. One that is neither the Creep of certain sexist-female stereotypes, the Proud Creep of the bloke magazines, or the self-punishing Guilt Tripper of “sensitive new age guy” images.
It’s a man who doesn’t have to be sexist in either direction. A man who knows yang’s just as valuable as yin.
Herewith, some tenets of our proposed He-Man Woman-Lover’s Club:
- We love women. We just don’t hate men, and we don’t hate being men.
- We fully admit our inability to fully understand women’s thoughts and feelings. We accept their frequent ability to outsmart, outplay, outwork, and outlive us.
- While many of us may never be a woman’s sole source of economic support, the women we love still have needs we can and should help fulfill. These include, but are not limited to, intimacy, friendship, sexual fulfillment, moral/spiritual support, the care and educating of children, career advice, and/or home repairs.
- While acknowledging women’s needs, we also respectfully assert our own needs. Every individual on Earth, including us, is incomplete without one or more loved ones of various capacities. Even many gay men acknowledge the need for the feminine in their lives, by adopting drag or feminized roles.
As hetero men, we fully admit we need women in our lives. We need women’s beauty, touch, wisdom, style, zeal, perserverence, leadership, and, yes, the occasional constructive nag.
- We enjoy the sight of women’s physiques, in all their infinite variety. This does NOT mean that we hate women but that we love them. It also does NOT mean that we don’t love women’s non-anatomical assets and strengths.
- Some of us have been customers of what has been collectively called “the sex industry” (strip clubs, pornography, prostitution, dominatrices, etc. etc.). We respect and honor the fine women who work in it. We want them to keep more of the money for which they work, instead of giving it up to managers and middlemen. We want them to be able to work and live without threats to their safety or fear of unjust laws.
(In a more ideal world, some of the socially-prominent present and former customers of the sex industry would out themselves and publicly proclaim support for sex-workers’ rights. More on that later, maybe.)
- We’ve no need for that outmoded madonna/whore dichotomy. Most “good girls,” including almost all our mothers, have or once had active sex lives of various sorts. And so-called “bad girls” are really praiseworthy treasures, freely sharing of their precious gifts.
- We’ve also no need for the more recent, but equally outmoded, male asshole/wimp dichotomy. A man, and male energy, can indeed be active forces for good in this world.
- When we work with or for women in employment, we don’t expect them to think or react just as us–or as each other. If they don’t like to hear dirty jokes, we don’t offer them. If they can tell dirtier jokes than we can think up, we let them.
- When we see a beautiful woman provocatively dressed in public, we neither scowl in mock consternation, nor steal a guilty and guilt-inducing glance, nor stare discomfortingly. We make eye contact and give a friendly, smiling gesture of approval, admiration, and thanks.
- While we crave and enjoy plenty of mutually-beneficial sex, we respectfully (if sometimes sighingly) acknowledge there are many, many women who will never care for sex with us–nuns, lesbians, co-workers, faithful wives, and women whose personal taste in men calls for looks or mannerisms other than our own.
I do not personally claim to have fully become this kind of man. But it is an ideal to which I, and I hope many others, will strive.
It’s hard to find contemporary role models for this type of man in the modern pop-culture universe, aside from certain soap-opera hunks or the heroes of the “urban love story” novels written by black men for black women. If you can think of any, please submit them to our luscious MISCtalk discussion boards.
MONDAY: My sordid past with John Carlson.
ELSEWHERE:
