Last week I posted the “bottom half” of my top ten posts of 2009. Here are my top five, in ascending order.
5. “She’s got you wrapped around her fingerâ€: fathers, daughters, and a variation on the myth of male weakness (August 25)
Excerpt:
I’m also troubled by the message this version of the myth of male weakness sends to girls. It encourages the noxious idea that men are loveable but easily led, and that “pretending to be weak†or “dressing real cute†are better strategies for young women to use to get what they want than simple forthright candor. In a very real way, it teaches little girls that manipulation is preferable to directness, and that good looks and feminine wiles are the most valuable tools a woman can possess. Above all, there’s a sinister reality that undergirds this whole discourse: if men are easily manipulated, than they can never fully be trusted. If a Dad can’t say no to his daughter, he sends her a message (however subliminal) that men are fundamentally unreliable. Whether in families or in boardrooms or in bed, one basic rule of life is that you can never, ever trust anyone who doesn’t have the strength and the agency with which to tell you “Noâ€.
4. Rihanna, Chris Brown, myths of male weakness and lies about transformation (March 10)
Excerpt:
And while we might be right to question Rihanna’s judgment in returning to this callow young man, it’s vital that we don’t put the onus for his transformation on her. Women are not responsible for “making men change.†Despite what the myth of male weakness tells us, men do not need to be nurtured and guided by their wives and girlfriends into becoming competent adults with a reasonable degree of self-control. If anyone is responsible for holding the Chris Browns of the world accountable, it’s other men — particularly older men — who need to signal, in an unmistakable way, that this sort of violence is puerile and utterly unacceptable. Chris Brown must change even if Rihanna doesn’t; whatever “issues†she has that leads her to be willing to return to a man who has beaten her savagely do not mitigate his moral and legal responsibility to deal with his own violent nature. If he hits her again, he is entirely responsible and she is entirely innocent. The first person to escalate a domestic dispute from a verbal exchange to a physical one is always to blame; to say otherwise is to repeat the odious lie that we humans are so frail that words can override our capacity for self-restraint.
3. “Sin boldlyâ€: against the trap of the “emotional†affair (February 24)
Excerpt:
Both men and women are equally prone to self-deception about emotional affairs. For men, acculturated to think of sex in purely physical terms, it’s often difficult to grasp the degree to which an emotional betrayal can be just as devastating as an explicitly carnal one, but women are not immune from this misunderstanding either. One of the ugliest aspects of the emotional affair is that the participants often applaud themselves for what they see as their own admirable restraint. A couple that goes to lunch every day, exchanging intimate chatter and exchanging longing glances, may feel both the agony of unsatisfied longing and the perverse satisfaction of imagined virtue. It’s easy to say “Oh, Frederick, aren’t we wonderful people? We know we want to be together, but too many people would be hurt! It’s proof of how special our love is — and proof of how good we both are — that we are only exchanging these texts and emails and longing looks rather than getting naked at the Good Nite Inn out by the interstate.†As the kids say these days, epic fail.
2. Of never feeling hot: the missing narrative of desire in the lives of straight men (May 4)
Excerpt:
The very real hurt, the very real rage, that men often feel as a result of having no sense of their own attractiveness has very real and very destructive consequences. It’s not women’s problem to solve; it’s not as if it’s women’s job to start stroking yet another aspect of the male ego. The answer lies in creating a new vocabulary for desire, in empowering women as well as men to gaze, and in expanding our own sense of what is good and beautiful, aesthetically and erotically pleasing. That’s hard stuff, but it’s worth the effort. I know what it is to believe myself repulsive, and what it was to hear that not only was I wanted, but that I was desirable for how I appeared as well as how I acted. That was precious indeed, and far too few men have known it.
#1 Post of the Year: “My wife is my best friendâ€/â€My wife is my only friendâ€: the Guy Code, and the inability to get naked without getting naked (April 7)
Excerpt:
The problem with connecting sexual intimacy with emotional vulnerability is that it breeds a particular kind of dependency. Once married or in a long-term monogamous relationship, the man becomes increasingly dependent upon his partner for emotional release. While she may also feel connected to him (one hopes that she does), women in our culture are generally given permission to separate emotional and sexual availability. Women are more likely to have friends of either sex with whom they can “get naked without getting nakedâ€; women are also more likely to have strong family support systems. And because both partners figure out that there is some sort of connection between sexual and emotional intimacy for the guy, it becomes all the more difficult for him to find others besides his wife or girlfriend with whom he can be vulnerable. One of the factors that works to prevent married men and women from having close opposite-sex platonic friendships is this suspicion that at least for men, sexual and emotional closeness are easy to confuse.
