Crushed Masculinity

No, this isn’t about the Chumph. It is about a different side of the masculinity belief that men should be in control and handle the “big issues”, while women should raise children and be submissive. I’ve known some guys who couldn’t tell he business end of a socket wrench from the part you hold onto. The masculinity myth has it that men are better then women at anything mechanical. It’s bullshit, and self destructive.

The male ego spans a lot of territory. From the guy in this story whose fragile ego was crushed by a competent woman, to the fake hyper-masculinity of a Trump

She changed his flat tire. He never called her again. Is this a case of a fragile male ego?

Theresa Ukpo was sitting in the passenger seat of her date’s car, trying to figure out what she did wrong. She was out with a guy she’d been seeing regularly for three months. It was the kind of night that required stilettos, and things had been going well — until his car got a flat tire.

He had pulled over on the side of the road and called AAA. It was dark and late; she didn’t feel safe. It would take anywhere from 30 minutes to three hours for AAA to show up. They could continue to wait, or she could just change the tire and they could be on their way in about 20 minutes, tops. “I figured if I can, why not do?” Ukpo said by phone of the date she first wrote about on the blog Madame Noire. “I don’t subscribe to this idea that because I’m a woman, I have to play this damsel in distress thing.”

It’s at this point in the story that Andrew Smiler, communications director at the Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity and the expert I called to discuss the fragility of the male ego, began chuckling. He knew where the tale was headed — and why. Like me, he’s heard countless stories like Ukpo’s, where confident, well-intentioned women are trying to help, but a dating disaster ensues. For clarity, I asked him, “What exactly is so funny?”

Smiler laughs again and explains: “We give people some really messed-up messages about gender roles. Even in the early 21st century, we have this supposedly egalitarian culture, and guys are taught that they should never show weakness or ignorance or inability to do a task. And in various ways they should ‘wear the pants’ in the relationship.”

This is probably what Ukpo’s date thought. She volunteered to change his tire so they wouldn’t have to wait. He didn’t believe she could, so he stood over her holding the light while she squatted and did what he thought was the impossible. He barely spoke to her the entire ride to her home, and she hasn’t heard from him since he dropped her off.

Ukpo wasn’t sure what she had done wrong. “My first inkling was that he was intimidated that I changed his tire,” she says. “Or maybe he thought I was being stubborn about not wanting to wait for AAA.”

When she asked her male friends what she did wrong, if anything, the answer was unanimous: She emasculated him.

In other words, the male ego — which Smiler defines as a shorthand for determining “whether or not a guy thinks he measures up or is masculine or macho enough — strikes again. Its pesky existence is the bane of a dating woman’s existence and the culprit of countless dating and relationship disasters. Managing it is like walking through a minefield. One misstep, andBOOM! there went your potential for a relationship. The fear of encountering the male ego’s wrath results in the muting of opinionated women, helplessness in otherwise take-charge types and second-guessing among the otherwise confident.

Given that the ego issue is all in a guy’s head, it sounds like a problem that he should have to work out with himself, but unfortunately that duty often falls to the women in his life. Why? Andrea Syrtash, relationship expert and author of “He’s Just Not Your Type (And That’s a Good Thing),” says guys with fragile egos haven’t been properly socialized to manage themselves. “Men are conditioned to be strong, to not show vulnerability because it’s a sign of weakness, and not encouraged to share what they’re feeling or be communicative,” Syrtash explains. “The ‘fragile male ego‘ comes from being misunderstood.”

When encountering such an ego, she suggests that women in the early stages of a dating run for the hills to avoid it. But for those who have more time invested, she recommends countering it by building confidence. “Women don’t always realize that although your man may be strong and silent and doesn’t share his feelings, he still needs to hear that he’s doing a good job, that he’s contributing well, that you respect him, that you appreciate him. That kind of approval goes a long way in a relationship,” Syrtash says…. Read the Rest Here…

 

Jeremy Lin – Race Matters

Growing up in the 60’s I was pretty comfortable in my ignorance about Asian people. They were short, small folks weren’t they? During segregation black folks didn’t much socialize with Asians, as the few Asian kids that were here went to the white schools. That comfortable ignorance was shattered my freshman year of college when I went to the Penn Relays and a friend introduced me to a 7′ tall Chinese High Jumper, who educated this poor brainless twit to the fact that Asia is huge, and peopled by a lot of different folks…

With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 eliminating racial quotas and restrictions on immigration (not to mention putting us all in the same schools in more enlightened parts of the country) – you would think folks would have learned a hell of a lot about each other by now.

I guess not in the last bastion of bigotry – Sports.

Jeremy Lin - The Kid's Got Game, Y'all

Opinion: Man to man defense

Last Friday, Jeremy Lin – the Knicks’ sensational out-of-nowhere superstar – finally sealed the deal.

Despite his record as one of the most exciting talents to come out of the Bay Area in years, leading Palo Alto High to a stunning 32-1 record in his senior prep year, he was recruited by none of the top basketball schools, finally opting to attend Harvard University after being offered a guaranteed spot on their team.

He subsequently dominated the Ivy League, and put up numbers in his senior year that should have gotten any NBA scout excited, becoming the only player in the NCAA’s Division 1 to rank in the top 10 in virtually every performance category.

And yet Lin went undrafted, finally accepting an offer of a deep backup slot on his hometown team, the Golden State Warriors – who gave him a handful of garbage minutes, shuffling him back and forth between the bench and the NBA’s development league, before finally releasing him in December.

The Houston Rockets, who’d lost center Yao Ming to retirement the previous season, briefly picked up Lin as a potential ploy to retain their substantial Asian fanbase, but dropped him a few weeks later – on Christmas Eve.

The Knicks, ravaged by injuries to all their big-name, big-ticket stars and reeling in the standings, picked him up to ensure they could field a full team on the floor. In the past week, Lin has led New York to a string of victories with a set of incredible individual and team performances.

And last Friday, after dropping 38 points on an elite Los Angeles Lakers squad, he convinced his remaining critics and doubters that they’d been wrong all along.

Most of them.

Minutes after Lin’s amazing game, with the streets of midtown still in the throes of LINsanity, Fox Sports News personality Jason Whitlock issued a flip, ostensibly satirical tweet that probably can not be reprinted in full here. Suffice it to say that it suggested that Lin would be celebrating his victory by entertaining “some lucky lady,” while also reiterating an ugly and cliché stereotype about Asian anatomy.

Why Jeremy Lin’s race matters

After heavy pressure from a range of sources, particularly the Asian American Journalists Association, on Sunday, Whitlock apologized for the joke, calling his remark “immature [and] sophomoric” and one that “debased a feel-good sports moment.”

While many people, including, apparently, Fox Sports News’s leadership, have been willing to let things go based on this act of contrition, I think Whitlock dodged addressing the larger cultural context behind his statement.

I think that’s unfortunate, especially in light of a few other recent in-the-news events.

The first is another offhand tweet by a television personality. Roland Martin, a commentator for the news channel behind this blog, CNN.

Just a week before Whitlock’s unfortunate gibe, as the Giants were headed for a shocking Super Bowl victory over the Patriots, Martin blurted a response to H&M’s sexy underwear commercial featuring David Beckham – suggesting to his followers that any men expressing enthusiasm for the ad should be slapped upside the head. The remark drew a firestorm of backlash from LGBT activists, who interpreted it as an anti-gay statement. Martin was subsequently suspended “indefinitely” from CNN appearances.

There is a connection between the two incidents, and it’s not just that they both related to prominent news figures caught out on social media. Both Whitlock and Martin are African-American men. And both were speaking from a position that illustrates a particular entrenched attitude among men of color about masculinity.

This isn’t the place to go deep into the record of how sexuality, gender and race have intersected in black, Latino and Asian American history, with tragic and sometimes horrific results. Suffice it to say that as a consequence of that history, within each of these communities, manhood – its definition, its expression and yes, the defense of it against those who would question it – plays an outsized role.

Whitlock’s joke said more about his own male insecurities, reinforced by mainstream culture’s stereotypes about black men, than it did about Lin’s anatomy.

And Martin’s joke was ultimately less of an attack on homosexuality than it was a rejection of “sissyhood”: Beckham has long been held up as an exemplar of the “metrosexual male” – the sensitive, fashion-forward guy who, gay or straight, presents an image that runs counter to the rugged and bellicose sensibility of organized team sports, particularly football.

As NFL cornerback turned sportswriter Alan Grant noted in an essay some years back for ESPN.com, “the athletic world – that realm of all things male, musky and aggressive – is the final frontier of masculinity,” which is why it’s so frequently a cesspool for, as he put it, “crude, old-fashioned, sophomoric statements about sexuality.” Like Whitlock’s. And Martin’s.

Whether they intended to or not – and even if they’re oblivious to the fact – with their comments, Whitlock and Martin injected themselves into a much larger conversation of what it means to be a “real man” in an era where manhood is constantly perceived to be “under attack.”

But maybe the particular male archetype that Whitlock, Martin and many others have held up as a benchmark is one that deserves to be under attack.

It celebrates physical parameters that few men can reach – certainly not Whitlock or Martin, or me, for that matter: Big, burly, massively muscled, inhumanly endowed. It reinforces the notion that manhood is best expressed through violence – giving women “pain,” per Whitlock, or “slapping the ish” out of someone, per Martin.

It is, quite frequently, accompanied by words and actions that are deeply misogynist or nastily homophobic, or both.

It presents manhood as the fruit of harsh treatment and abuse – as exemplified by the viral video of the so-called “Eagle Dad,” Chinese businessman He Liesheng, forcing his four-year-old son to run around Central Park in the snow in his underwear to make him more manly: “When the old eagle teaches its young, it takes the young eagles to the cliffside, beats them, and pushes them to teach them to use their wings,” explained He.

One of the things that’s most incredible about the Jeremy Lin phenomenon isn’t just that he’s had so much success, but that he’s done so without relying on or embracing the tenets of raw, rugged, roughneck notions of manhood…