We have all heard the phrase “not all men,” but maybe instead of making excuses and apologizing for others’ misogyny, it would be better for us males to step back and recognize how it affects us too.
There are the super manly men, those guys whose muscle mass crushes the earth everywhere they go. Men who can throw a football so far that by the time it lands, it isn’t even a football anymore, but instead some kind of football-esque dust. Men who have known how to tie a tie since they were in the womb.
And that’s just awesome for those guys, I guess. But they’re a pretty small minority.
Despite this, many men still spend a majority of their time trying to convince women to want that guy and pretending to be that guy. Directly, this is misogynistic. Indirectly, this leads to tons upon tons of male insecurity.
If you don’t believe me, turn on your television next time you happen to be up at
3 a.m.
“Do you want to perform better? Do you want women to love you? Do you want to be a real man for once in your life? Well, you had better buy our pills! Don’t worry about what’s in them. You need this!”
This is a pretty extreme example of a very specific insecurity, but it’s far more widespread and subtle than that.
Have you ever met one of those men who’s always complaining about how his wife or girlfriend makes more money than he does? This is a person who is complaining that he’s able to live more comfortably because someone who loves him and is willing to share her money with him just happens to have a lot of it. I don’t know what this is other than illogical.
How about the guy whose immediate reaction upon anyone else’s line of vision falling anywhere within a 359-degree sweep of his girlfriend is to raise his fists and scream? Yeah, once you go to prison for assault, she’ll realize how much she’s attracted to you!
The biggest problem with these insecurities and asinine ideals of masculinity is that they’re self-perpetuating. You probably didn’t come up with these standards, but if you are a straight male, you still want women to like you. You may even, on a logical level, recognize how ridiculous the above-described behavior is. But after you’ve seen a few hundred movies telling you that’s what a woman wants — and even more misogynistically, needs — you might just start to believe it.
And once you believe it, you might start pretending to be that guy. And then once you’ve started pretending to be that guy, your friend might start to feel inadequate because he isn’t that guy. And then once he feels sufficiently inadequate, he might start pretending to be that guy too.
And then he tells two friends. And then they tell two friends. And then they tell two friends. And then you have an entire pyramid void of self-awareness!
Jokes aside, hardly anybody is, and nobody needs to be, that guy. More importantly, no woman is required to be attracted to any particular type of man, because no person is required to be attracted to any particular type of person.
Ryan Monk is a 22-year-old chemical engineering senior from Lake Charles, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter @RyanMonkTDR.