Male Issues

At the Women's March

Men aren’t doing well here in the 21st century. Male life expectancy has always been lower than that of females by about five years but lately, it is declining further. Researchers cite what they call “deaths of despair” in non-college-educated white men aged 45-54. “The mortality rate for that group… increased by a half percent each year from 1999 to 2013,” according to NPR, mostly because of suicide, drugs, and alcohol, yet progressives insist men should renounce their “white male privilege.” It would appear that white men are feeling anything but privileged.

Fifty years ago, 60% of those with bachelor’s degrees were men. Today the reverse is true. Boys are behind girls in primary and secondary schools as well and according to a 2002 60 Minutes report they’ve been falling behind for a long time. Increasingly, boys simply don’t like school. For many parents, it’s a fight to get their sons to school every morning.

During my teaching career, it was clear that the culture of most public school classrooms suited girls much more than boys, many of whom found it confining and restrictive. They needed more active, hands-on activities such as a vocational school environment would provide. Unfortunately, those were reserved for high school boys only — by which time many had developed profoundly negative feelings about school and themselves that were very hard to penetrate.

Men who do go to college might be considered part of a “rape culture,” especially white men. Ask the Duke Lacrosse team. Ask the University of Virginia’s Phi Kappa Psi fraternity about “rape culture.” With no evidence, and only on the word of a single woman in each case, two large universities made these young men’s lives hell because both institutions denied the men any presumption of innocence and automatically assumed the worst. The same phenomenon led to the Kavanaugh Hearings debacle.

At the Women's March

This is not to deny that a lot of men behave abominably toward women and always have. Such men have little or no control over their sexual urges and don’t think they need to either, no matter who is hurt by their actions. Relatively recent laws against sexual harassment were much needed and overdue, but presumption of innocence and due process must be enforced at all times.

Last week’s news included articles on “toxic masculinity” and a Gillette commercial titled: “Is This The Best A Man Can Get?” Several conservative pundits objected but I saw little problem with it. It dramatized examples of men and boys bullying others and disrespecting women, but also of good men speaking up and acting to intervene.

Conspicuous by its absence in any of this was the plague of pornography to which so many men and boys have become addicted, and which contributes enormously to the dehumanization of women. That scourge was never mentioned.

At the March For Life

Last weekend there were two women’s marches in Washington. Friday saw the 44th March for Life. It was attended by a hundred thousand or more conservative women and a few men marching against abortion. Saturday it was the 3rd annual Women’s March with liberal women and many themes: Mostly it was a march against President Trump because the 1st march occurred the day after his inauguration. Second to that was a pro-abortion theme. Then there were climate change, black lives matter, and an anti-male theme. One sign called for the extinction of old white men. 

At the Women's March

Numbers were down at the Women’s March after a controversy over anti-Semitism — especially that of Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. One of the March’s organizers, Tamika Mallory, has a close association with Farrakhan and refused to denounce his Anti-Semitic statements. Ironically, it was Farrakhan who organized the Million Man March which drew more than 400,000 in 2005 and pushed themes of black unity, personal responsibility, and respect for black women — all good things it would seem. Anti-semitic remarks by Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian Muslim, drove down numbers as well.

At the Women's March

Meanwhile, $4.4 million in taxpayer money funded an American Psychological Association study that purports to define “traditional masculinity” and especially what it sees as negative aspects of it. Psychologists from Clark University and other institutions contributed to the "First-Ever Guidelines for Practice with Men and Boys," which includes, for example, a "Male Role Norms Inventory-Short Form” by former APA President Ronald Levant — an analysis of how much “toxic masculinity” men have as determined by questions like: “Do you think men should be macho, or do you lean more to the metrosexual?” That is the highlighted question on his web site.

At the Women's March

Levant discounts biological differences between men and women, believing masculinity is entirely a social construct. I suspect that when men learn more about the APA’s new guidelines, even fewer will seek counseling from guys like Levant. They’d rather kill themselves.

Dilly Dilly!

Sir Brad is ready to begin the Pit of Misery tour

Wild Card Weekend was wonderful. It was much too cold to go outside Saturday and Sunday here in Maine, but there were two football games between high-level teams to watch both days. What’s not to like? Next weekend will be similar: two games Saturday — including one with the hometown Patriots at Gillette Stadium — and two more on Sunday. Tremendous athletes at the top of their abilities will compete and I’m a football fan again.

Readers of this column know I’m a political junkie, studying the latest developments for at least two hours every day. I watch Sunday morning political programs on at least two networks, but when afternoon comes I don’t want any more politics. I want to watch football. This season, however, politics creeped into the game during the national anthem and that put a damper on Sunday afternoons for millions of us. It wasn’t good for the teams as they saw lots of empty stadium seats. It wasn’t good for TV networks or the NFL either because they lost viewers. I kept watching Patriots games but some of the shine had gone.

Mainstream media gave national anthem sit-downs and kneel-downs plenty of attention at first. Then it all backfired after President Trump weighed in and accused players of lacking patriotism. Many fans agreed and voted with their feet by staying away from games. They voted with their remotes by refusing to tune in at home on their TVs. Revenue declined. After that, media stopped their political coverage by refusing to film the playing of the national anthem before gametime. Politics went out the exits. Football fields went back to being exclusively athletic arenas and politics didn’t make the playoffs. Hurray for that.

When my family was young there wasn’t time to watch football, but by the Tom Brady era our nest had emptied and suddenly there was time. I could again experience total immersion in a sea of testosterone. Football is a male world and I hadn’t realized how much I missed it. Don’t misunderstand; I love women. I’ve been sleeping next to one for almost forty-seven years. I have a mother, four sisters, three daughters, two granddaughters and love them all. I also spent thirty-six years in education — a female-dominated profession. Even our two family dogs were females. Can I be forgiven if sometimes I prefer the exclusive company of men? Too bad if I can’t.

It’s not just the football that I enjoy. Televised games are full of commercials aimed at men too. They’re mostly ads for pick-up trucks and beer and some are very funny. In one, various people bring gifts of Bud Light beer to a medieval king, who thanks them by saying, “Dilly dilly!” Others present raise their bottles in toast and repeat: “Dilly-dilly!” Then, an unfortunate fellow puts some mead before the king, who is displeased. The king looks at him and says: “Please follow Sir Brad. He is going to give you a private tour of the pit of misery.” As the king’s torturer, Sir Brad, drags the poor guy away, others hold up their beers in toast, chanting: “Pit of misery! Dilly dilly!

The commercial doesn’t sound funny in the least, right? But somehow it is. There’s no explanation beyond that it probably reminds men of ridiculous things they’ve done and laughed about while drinking beer together. It’s 21st century code for, “Eat, drink, and be merry!” It’s completely unserious and beckons others to join the mirth. If “dilly dilly” has any real meaning, nobody can find it.

So what’s the purpose of football? What’s the point of eleven men carrying, throwing, catching, and kicking an oblong piece of inflated leather a hundred yards down a field while eleven other strong, swift men try to stop them? It’s a guy thing, like war without the killing. It satisfies something in the male psyche, but it’s not unrestrained violence. It has rules all participants must obey or be penalized, even ordered to leave the field. Players are judged by their physical ability which is remarkable, their mental acuity under pressure, their teamwork, perseverance, and heart.

And there’s nothing new in all this. The earliest Olympic Games in the 8th century BC were exclusively for men as I learned when visiting the site in 2014. Married women were banned both from competition and from viewing as well, but “maidens” were allowed. Why that distinction was made our guide didn’t say. Perhaps the “maidens” were an ancient equivalent of today’s cheerleaders. Perhaps it was because the men competed while oiled and naked, but then homosexuality was widespread in ancient Greece by some accounts. Maybe it was that.

Whatever the reasons for men wishing to spend time away from women once in a while, they go back a long way. It may have become politically incorrect in the 21st century, but it’s not going away.