Why Men & Masculinity Are a Dying Species...

Sometimes things happen in your day that make you just wonder what the F*^K is going on. I've had a few of those moments lately but the thing is they seem to be happening more and more lately and, after what happened today, I am convinced that the role of men in the world is pretty much being obliterated right before our eyes. Or at least it has been slowly destroyed over the last 40 years.

It's been a long time coming, mind you, as some people would have you believe that its better to have no real defined roles for men and women because then you are classifying what one sex can and can't do. I can see that as well as I can see how having rigid roles for men and women is also wrong and has led to sexist attitudes among many different cultures over the years. The problem is that over the last 30-40 years, while women have been rightfully gaining a larger role in many areas of the North American workforce, men are being subjugated and pushed aside, trivialized and marginalized while they lose their livelihoods, their careers, their "manhood" and their self-esteem, all so that women can feel better about themselves and gain more in more in the workforce.

I may well be generalizing but take a minute and see if this makes sense.

How many commercials do we watch on a nightly basis on TV. Lets say at least 5 every commercial break and maybe 4 or 5 breaks per hour. So during a 1 hour network program show like NCIS or CSI, each of us watches somewhere in the range of 20 commercials per hour. Now think about how many of those commercials are either Rogers or Leon's. Now think about the new Leon's ads where the women mocks her husband. What about the Rogers commercials where the young guys are morons, mocked by their female friends. Or the new Rogers commercials where the husband is made to look like a fool while the wife is made to look much smarter.

How about in general how men are made to look like fools in just about every commercial, not just the specific ones I just mentioned. Think about how often men are made to look like idiots in commercials and how often women are made to look like fools. I honestly can't even remember the last time I saw a commercial where a man had the upper hand on a woman (in any sense).

Maybe ad execs are just trying to tap into the new found wealth young working women have in our time or maybe its more then that. Women now are in many more areas of power when it comes to TV, advertising, banking, you name it, that maybe these ads are being made by women, for women specifically, like an inside joke that only women get. Can you imagine if there were ads that did the reverse? There would be an outcry about how Company ABC that paid for the ad and approved it is sexist and should be boycotted for such prejudiced ads. Just look at how the Augusta National Golf Course has been vilified over the years because they, a private members-only golf club, refuses to have a female club member.

Its a PRIVATE CLUB, not a public one, but because it hosts one of the 4 Major Golf  Tournaments and generates a crap load of money, Women's groups have been up and arms demanding the club change their policy. My response if I was running that club would be that when the Girl Guides start accepting boys and when ALL clubs are (gyms, public golf courses and any other private member club across the country) starts to accept members of both sexes, so will Augusta. A Private club still has the right to choose their members, regardless of whether the National Organization of Women likes it or now.

Back to my main point however. Sure, stats will still tell you that women are not making as many gains as they once were in certain, specific fields but there are some areas where women are not only making significant strides but have already done so to the point where they far outnumber men in both the classroom and the workplace. In schools, girls are doing far better then boys when it comes to math and science, fields that used to be dominated by boys. In the workplace, there have always been certain fields where women will far outnumber men and they continue to do so. Fields such as nursing, social workers, and elementary school teaching positions will always be filled more by women then men. That's just a given, for whatever reason.

Just from my own banking experience, I would say that nearly 80-85% of my co-workers in nearly 10 years of working for banks have been women (if not more). While the majority (if not all) bank CEO's may all be men in the big banks, the majority of their managers (both at the branch level and call centers as well) are now women. The majority of personal bankers now are women. The majority of call center staff are women. The majority of Tellers are women. Our banking system is now almost entirely made up of women. Which is probably why many of the decisions I see on a daily basis drive me bat shit.

Going a step further, lets look at a profession where women are the majority of the staff and see what is going on there: Teaching. Many of the children that are coming through our schools nowadays are confused about the roles of men and women because of all the mixed messages they are seeing all over their world whether its at home with the no longer nuclear family dynamics, blended families, divorced parents, gay parents. Television, the new generations' babysitters, and its mixed messages aren't any better. So when a child comes to school, confused and unsure of what their role is, they are hoping to find some kind of direction to help them. Instead they are being told that it's OK to be confused.

Instead they are being told that aggression, for all intents and purposes the exact definition of masculinity for centuries, is wrong. They are getting suspended for fighting each other (I was a kid and I had my fair share of fights in grade school and it didn't negatively effect me) when in the old days all that would happen if there was a school yard fight was a stern talking to and maybe a discussion with the Principal of the school. Any kind of teasing (which happens in school) is now being classified as bullying and therefore is a huge no-no (bullying and teasing are not the same thing but are being lumped together in some cases). Kids are no longer being taught to stand up for themselves, instead being asked to go running to a teacher and become tattle tales any time something goes wrong. We are teaching our kids that they don't have to actually solve their own problems, that they need to turn to someone else to do it.

All of this harkens back to my old theory that we are adopting a soccer-mom mentality throughout our society that is eliminating masculinity as a whole. Feminism and many of its most ardent followers, unilaterally rendered chivalry passe (much to the dismay of many a woman now that would love to be "swept off their feet" romantically by a "real" man and are now reading the "Shades of Grey" series almost as fast as tweens were reading the "Twilight" series) for how men were "doing things" for women. While I can understand not being rendered useless by your partner (hence the use of the word partner) there is nothing wrong with chivalry as long as there is equality between the man and woman involved. The problem is that soccer mom mentality is turning our kids into shells of people, one dimensional dullards who can't cope with anything, only know what they want and don't care about anyone else other then themselves. As much as Feminism helped woman gain their equal rights, it has also changed the lives of men and the way our children are raised and not all for the better.

Now, there certainly were things that needed to change about men over the years but at this point, the pendulum has swung well past half and now men are taking the brunt of every joke. We are being ridiculed for being "old fashioned" if we try to put any kind of restraint on our teenage daughters. Hell, we aren't even really needed to have kids or even sex for that matter anymore, not with artificial insemination and strap-ons/vibrators so common place. With the role of men dissipating so vastly over the last 20 years, its a small wonder we are having more and more boys in our schools having social problems. They are being over-analyzed by doctors (who are more concerned with the number of pills they prescribe then actually helping the kids they see, but that's a different blog) and are carrying over the confusion they feel at home into the classroom, their lack of true direction in their own lives.

I read a statistic on cnn.com that within 50 years, given all the environmental pollutants around, the male human species could get to the point where baby boys being born (on a world wide basis) could drop to 1 in every 20 births. With the way things are heading right now with all the gender confusion that exists in our society, it wouldn't matter if it was 1 male birth in every 5, the role of men in society is no longer a major concern. Men have been pushed aside as the role of women has grown over the last 30 years (which was expected to a certain extent but, as I mentioned earlier, has gone too far in some cases). 

Some of the things that happen on a daily basis around me are infuriating but can change. Sadly, this seems to be one area where changing to a more equitable situation would require changing so many areas (even if it is only in small ways) that it will never happen because someone will pop up and say its sexist to even mention things like the ones I have. 

The truth hurts sometimes but all I am telling you is the way I see it....