Oh, the irony of a guy who has often wondered if he was a human being, let alone a male one, empathizing and relating so deeply to the questions and answers in this thread.
The top voted comment: "That you really can be sitting there thinking about nothing."
That yielded a torrent of anecdotes about men who were in fact thinking of *something*...it was just something utterly inconsequential, highly embarrassing or incriminating, or (most often) both. It wasn't until well on down that subthread I found someone who said he didn't just think about nothing, he could tune his surroundings out for the most part. I won't belabour the point that this is my default state. I will simply say how comforting it is to know I'm not alone.
But absent a pressing need to think about something, I am in a state of no-thought.
"How can you be so oblivious to subtle (and sometimes not-to-subtle) hints?"
Said "hints" usually have something to do with a woman being attracted to us, and let me tell you, despite all appearances, we're not oblivious to those sorts of hints. We are, rather, completely and utterly terrified of acting upon one of them, just in case we turn out to be wrong. The price of inaction is. at worst, a lifetime's regret. That pales in comparison to the price of action, which could range from being publicly humiliated to, in certain contexts, jail time. It's Pascal's Wager in miniature....some men would suggest that a woman being attracted to them is in fact proof of the existence of God, but I digress. Like somebody said, "I could have pained "date me" on his forehead"...and somebody else noted "well, then he wouldn't see it there on his forehead, would he?" A third said "until he got home, looked in a mirror, and realized what he missed."
"The way you are just as moody as women, but still complain about women and their emotions."
Because, of course, men are taught to stifle and suppress theirs. Crying is a sign of weakness, right? Actually, it's more likely a sign you've been too strong for too long, but we'll let that go.
This one still trips me up: that women don't want their problems solved, just listened to and empathized with. I'm pretty good at both those things, if I do say so myself, but I still have to stomp on the urge to say something like "but this would all go away if you'd just..."
...but then it would be gone, Ken, and she'd be confronted with the quintessentially male state of thinking about nothing. Can't have that!
One thing I don't do is complain about emotions. They are the touchstones of the soul and they lubricate most social interactions. Without them we would not be human. But yeah: I often think my feeling this is not the problem, the thing causing me to feel this way is the problem.
"Why do you guys play with yourselves so much?"
Because it feels good. Next question.
No, wait a second. This is one of those things that actually causes no end of friction in many relationships, friction that expresses itself with some variant of he's jerking off and he could be having sex with me. I'd like to address this, as, ahem, touchy as it is, because it contains a couple of assumptions about men that are just plain wrong.
For sin-stance: We are explicitly rejecting you by masturbating.
Believe it or not, men will often masturbate to orgasm out of sheer boredom. Or because pressure has built up and has to be relieved. Bothering you to do it--which puts performance obligations on us--is not necessarily something we want to do. Not always for selfish reasons, either. We understand that you're tired/Aunt Flo from Red River has come for a week's stay/you have a headache (sex is actually a pretty good analgesic for menstrual cramps and mild to moderate headaches both, but sssshhhh). We can take care of the situation in two minutes flat without making a big production out of it. Doesn't mean we don't want you.
And edging into more controversial territory: ask any man about the visuals he may be using as a prop and if he's articulate enough, he will tell you quite sincerely that he's not fantasizing about the porn star. He's probably fantasizing about you doing the things the porn star is doing, which may or may not be part of your repertoire, but he's not thinking about being with the woman or women on screen. Many men, faced with the actual opportunity to be with a porn star, would be intensely conflicted. Great sex, to be sure, but she had to practice to get that good. With other men. Umm...
(There's men being silly for you: what's the appeal of a virgin, anyway? Give me somebody who knows what they're doing, she might teach me a thing or six.)
He might be thinking of somebody else while he's ruining his eyesight and growing hair on his palms. He will never admit this, of course, but thinking about sex with somebody is miles away from having sex with somebody. I thought about sex with damn near everybody from the age of eleven on and didn't actually have sex with somebody until I was nineteen: I rest my case. If he's thinking about your sister or your best friend or a co-worker while he's actually there with you, well, that's a real issue. If he always thinks, obsessively, about that sister/friend/co-worker, that's a real issue. Otherwise: it isn't.
Here's the one that really hit me where I live, and I'm going to quote "stitchedlamb" at length:
Why they don't get how sexy they are. Not in the way they usually think (muscles!) but the way they work their hair when they think no one is looking, little half smiles, shirt riding up to show their skin, stuff like that. Dudes doing little things can get a lady wet as hell and it seems like that part of male sexuality is glossed over in our culture.
I know you straight guys don't get it, but we love looking at you like you like looking at us. Whenever I explain this to male friends, they look at me like I'm nuts. Why is it so hard to believe?
Loaded question, that last. It's like a hanging curve floating right into my low self-esteem wheelhouse: there's been one woman in the world who ever called me sexy versus probably a dozen who have explicitly called me ugly and countless others who refrained from doing so out of good breeding. I never once believed the girl who said I was sexy. Didn't stop me from marrying her, though.
It's not just me, though. Guys, even sexy guys, don't generally get called sexy. Or handsome. Or anything.
I've seen it time and time again on Facebook. There's a former colleague of mine at Sobeys who is quite simply stunning. Every two months or so she'll put up a new profile pic, either a selfie or what appear to be professionally done portraits, and they will cause the heart of any functional straight man and probably most of the lesbian hearts to beat just that little bit faster. Nothing remotely sexual about any of these pictures: she is "just" a beautiful, beautiful woman. I'll contribute to the torrent of praise she gets: "wow, ######, you look incredible", all the while thinking boy, I hope she doesn't misinterpret that, especially given I'm old enough to be her dad. Ken, did you just twitch a little bit? You dirty old man, you.
I'm far from alone, although the female compliments outnumber the male ones ten to one.
Men don't put up selfies on Facebook, as a rule. When they do. they'll get a smattering of likes and a few comments--invariably from women, and (in my experience) either tepid or so overblown there's no chance in hell I could misinterpret them. Nothing to what women get.
I find this sad on both sides. For the women, of course, their self-worth seems to be tied entirely to their physical appearance. This, incidentally, is completely untrue, and not just because Ken says it is. I wish I could find the link, I've spent twenty minutes of intensive Googling and nada, but trust me: somebody once ran an experiment where they photoshopped various ugly and misshapen bits into a thoroughly off-putting photograph, paired it up with an entirely fictitious and really scary personality description, and set the creation loose on some dating site. Result: hundreds of replies.
Men very rarely get any responses on dating sites. Just like they rarely get complimented on Facebook selfies. In this case it's a little more nuanced: dress in a suit and tie and it's not that you're handsome, exactly, it's that the suit and tie signify a man of action and accomplishment. That's sexy. Men doing things. It's another of those fantasy tropes, the one Shrek turned on its head: the woman is there to be rescued. Preferably the slaying of dragons is involved, but the knight in shining armour-slash-prince is of course a fine specimen of manhood: he had to be. Ugly fat guys don't kill dragons.
So, to summarize: men can't compliment women because rapist pervert and women can't compliment men because he'll think I want him. Sad state of affairs.
Even sadder: Men never compliment other men because eww, that's gay, dude!
Actually, not quite true. I have one male friend, straight as an arrow, who is secure enough in every way to say "I love you" to me every once in a while. I'll say the same, because it's true. I do love the guy. Men, you love your best friends, don't you? Of course you do. Wouldn't it be a better world if we could just say it?
It would be nice if we lived in a world where compliments could be freely given without fear or shame. Both genders are afraid to say anything just plain nice to strangers or acquaintances of the other gender lest they be mistaken for sexual advances. How awful is that, really? It's even more of a minefield because women, in particular, are conditioned to crave sexual attention, on account of it being -- supposedly -- the sole measure of a woman's worth. And men are "supposed" to want and desire sex above all else (sigh)...you can perhaps see the conundrum.
As a man, I reiterate: what does make it hard, pun definitely intended, is when you field a compliment from somebody to whom you may actually be intensely attracted. Even an innocent one. We don't get compliments much: we cherish the ones we do get...but at the time, we almost have to ignore it, or at best shrug it off: she probably didn't mean that the way I heard it.
I'd like to live in a world where compliments might lead to hugs, and hugs might lead to cuddles, but none of those things automatically had to lead to sex. I think it would be a better world.
In the meantime, it is perhaps a little bit of a relief to see that men are every bit the puzzle we say women are.
1 comment:
Well said.
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