|
I just saw 'Superman Returns' with my Dad.
“Things are getting pretty desperate, when all the boys can’t be men. Everybody knows I’m her friend, everybody knows I’m her man.”
I know I use the above line often when talking about being disappointed in men as a half of the species but it keeps being relevant.
A friend once said of me he sometimes thinks I’m a dyke because I find myself in a world of men who aren’t really men at all. People who have utterly failed at being whole persons or being able to love wholly. My options for love being thus limited, I turned to women and in the wake decided to pick up the traits in men that I found admirable. Those traits that they had left behind or failed to actualize themselves.
Now, aside from how utterly offensive the above may sound to modern day P.C. sexuality/genderists, I can see how ripe and plausible this view of a dyke’s origin is for a man stuck in a world of declining men. A real psychological point along the lost path as it were, just as Athena was a point for Ancient Greecian men.
I feel myself surrounded by men who are good people with hearts capable of caring (if not certainly scarred/damaged; though this is neither an excuse nor a qualifier) but who have no idea what to do with themselves in this world. In their uncertainty they turn to every distraction at hand; meaningless sex, drinking, other substance addictions, emotional addictions, and a huge swarm of every sort of self destructive action.
Unmarried men from the age or 25-35 are FAR more likely to die in violent circumstances then men of the same age who are married. Do they really need women and children that badly to give them a reason to live? Would they have nothing in themselves to live for otherwise?
I understand and have experienced that women- regardless of sexuality- have relationship with one another than run the entire gambit as far as meaning and function go. More importantly, women are allowed to have these relationships. I don’t think men are or do.
Back to the wishy-washyness. Is this lack of direction and self definition to do with the idea that men are no longer being defined by their job when once that was the main standard? Are they struggling to find something else to define themselves by but floundering in indifference and uncertainty instead? Could be.
I’m not suggesting the blokes all go out into the woods, get naked, and start a drumming circle to reclaim their manly man-ness but hey- there are far worse things men could be attempting to do for themselves as men. I actually DON’T have a suggestion to this problem other than the one I have for most problems. Self examination followed by action. It’s a two step program gents.
All this also makes me think of how as a consequence of these good hearted but loserish men in my life I’ve often come to wonder at the use of fathers. I do think that a father or a male influence, or what a father should be to a child, is a great thing. If, you know, any of them would actually be fit for it.
last modified Jul 29, 2006 at 21:25
|