It’s a mistake to try and describe the differences between sexes (men are from Mars women are from Venus) by looking for some intellectual explanation. This might work if we were totally rational creatures like Spock on Star Trek – but we are not. We are searching too high, pretending we are something we are not. We find it easy to ignore the fact that we are just animals. We walk upright; we have developed a language; we clothe our bodies; and, because of our opposed thumbs, are able to control our environments. But, we are still animals - and male and female animals each have specific functions in the Animal Kingdom.
Maybe that’s to simplistic. What intellect we do possess constantly classes with our instincts. We try to understand our feelings, and justify our actions, while trying to discern the feelings and actions of others. Men are able to understand the actions of other men, because we have similar instincts and feelings, but for a man to actually understand the actions of a woman is impossible. We do not have the same emotional make-up nor share the same instincts. To make things even more impossible, the current politically correct trend is to consider all gender as unisex and deny two hundred and fifty million years of animal development.
So what do we know about men and women? I can tell you about men. I’m an authority on men. I am one.
I can also give you my impression of women, but it must be all conjecture. I can only describe what I see and have experienced after filtering it through my male point of view. ( See next week's Blog.)
MEN
Most men are rational animals. We see things with an analytic view. Math, geometry and science are our best subjects in school. We look at a wobbly chair and know that the screws need to be tightened. If our car make an unknown noise it sends us searching for a cause. We enjoy competitive games. We enjoy an element of danger. We like action movies. We are all capable of anger and killing. We are prone to respond violently to insults, wrongs and injuries. Physical intimidation and war is our natural response for settling differences. We are capable of extreme loyalty to friends and are willing to face death for a principle. We look at all moderately good looking women as sexual objects. We are less concerned with our looks and more concerned with our image. We can have sex without love, but love is synonymous with sex.
I mentioned the male ego. Among males you are either a leader, or a follower, or a victim. In young males this position is generally defined by physical prowess. In adult life business success and money may replace physical prowess. However, neither business success, nor money nor physical ability necessarily confers leadership (the alpha male.) Being the alpha (you-th-man) is an attitude. It is total self-confidence and being comfortable with your manhood. The alpha looks at no one as his better and few as his equal. It is total ego. We’re back to animal behavior. The alpha male gets the pick of the females. Every man knows his positions: those that are alpha are confident; those that want-to-be are insecure; those that know they aren’t are followers; and the ostracized turn away from the heard and graze until picked off by the want-to-bes.
Being an alpha male is a great feeling, and regardless of her frustration a woman will never experience that feeling. Only the female with her cross-threaded reality could, at the same time, desire and despise confident manhood.
Now, I know I had a fucked-up childhood. But in the south, young white males of the 1950’s (that is the only group I can speak for) were following a well-defined path to gender identity. You knew that as soon as you could get your driver’s license, fuck a female, drink straight whiskey without gagging, smoke a cigar, chew tobacco, and kill a deer you’d be a man. As a man you could go out to deer camp with the rest of the men – a place where no women were allowed - a place where men were men. You could drink, spit and cuss. You could walk inside with muddy boots, smoke a cigar and dump the ashes on the floor; you could eat raw meat, fart and laugh about it, ogle the calendar of necked women on the wall and tell dirty jokes. With gun in hand and a hangover you would sit on your deer stand and feel like a man. Nietzsche said that men should be trained for war and women for the recreation of the warriors - and young boys who became men in my generation in the south felt like warriors. There was no gender confusion. The male was the alpha animal of the gender and the female was for his recreation.
Women have always been attracted by alpha male behavior. But true to their unfathomable mental processes, once married, women systematically go about neutering their man. “Take your shoes off on the new carpet, smoke outside, you drink too much, don’t drive so fast, not tonight – you’ve already had it once this week.” It is an insidious process that turns the husband into some milk toast that his wife would not have liked when she was single. It really is the fault of the man however, for we’ll do anything for peace and a piece. Like Nietzsche, the ideal situation might be for men to live together in hunting camps and ride their motorcycle down the road to the whorehouse whenever they need feminine companionship
However, in the politically correct United States of today we are encouraged to view males and females as a unisex, genderless soup. Many young males growing up today have no sense of identity. A young male will have female teachers, work under a woman at McDonalds, have a female sergeant when he joins the military, and find female authority figures everywhere he goes. If he ever dares assert his masculinity he will be reminded of his despicable nature and his obligation to always be submissive and genderless. This social more is in total contradiction with the nature of male animal instinct.
I think that the Possum Pledge at the Possum Lodge on the Red Green Show speaks for the politically correct attitude toward manhood: “I am a man, but I can change, if I have to, I guess.”
Now, this may sound like I resent women. That is the farthest thing from the truth. I idolize women. They are the most beautiful, desirable, fascinating creatures on the face of the earth. They are so naturally different from men in every way they become our obsession. I was raised to admire women, respect women, protect women and I adore my wife; but, somehow competing against women, to me, seems like an unnatural state.
I am a man, and I make no apologies for it.
