Am I a man? Yes. Technically I am.
Mar. 14th, 2008 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
urbpanThis is part two of the answers to the meme from the other day. My drinkin' buddy and dogsitter ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
belen1974 asked me what it was like to be a man, and two related questions.
What's it like to be a man?
I don't have much to compare it with, other than being a boy. Being a man is a bit better than being a boy, but I imagine about the same difference between being a woman and a girl. I get to buy candy whenever I want, plus porn magazines or stuff in hardware stores if they mood strikes me. I can stay up as late as I want, except that I don't want to any more now that I have to work for a living. You know, like you.
I don't think much about being a man. There have been times in my life where I have suddenly realized that I am no longer a boy (then I continued to act like a boy as much as I could get away with) but those sort of realizations are over. I'm almost 40, so if I'm not a man now, I'd better figure out what else I could be.
Since this is a patriarchal culture, I'm not forced to contemplate what it means to be a man all that much. It's better, one must suppose, than being a woman: as Hank Hill told Bobby: "It's called a double standard. Don't knock it, you got the long end of the stick." So the men's movement is largely a joke, and groups of men gathering together to pretend they are suffering is ludicrous.
It's not all higher salaries and burping whenever you want. Being a man means that the culture at large (other men especially) expect you to dampen your emotions as much as possible. It means stiffening into possible confrontation whenever another man is coming down the street toward you. It means that the fact I'm smaller than most other men is something I'm never able to forget. It means that I'm judged on how much money I make, how much I can lift, and how nice my shoes are. I'm sure there's much more to it, but I mostly take it for granted, because that's the way it is. If you have more specific questions about being a man, I'm happy to go there.
Oh, and I think about sex all the time.
How do you feel about having visible hair on your back?
Well, it's not visible to me, so why should I care? No, I don't too much mind. I'm not the kind of guy who's going to get waxed or something, so I've just gotten over it. I know that it's not considered attractive to the mainstream woman, but the wife doesn't seem to mind.
Why don't you experiment with your facial hair more, like make a green beard or cultivate a handlebar mustache?
The wife does mind this.
Well, the green hair thing I've explored, and beard hair is a lot like pubic hair: it's very hard to bleach. The handlebar mustache is for WWI fighter pilots, Barbershop quartet members, and irritatingly hip 20 year old boys.
belen1974 asked me what it was like to be a man, and two related questions.What's it like to be a man?
I don't have much to compare it with, other than being a boy. Being a man is a bit better than being a boy, but I imagine about the same difference between being a woman and a girl. I get to buy candy whenever I want, plus porn magazines or stuff in hardware stores if they mood strikes me. I can stay up as late as I want, except that I don't want to any more now that I have to work for a living. You know, like you.
I don't think much about being a man. There have been times in my life where I have suddenly realized that I am no longer a boy (then I continued to act like a boy as much as I could get away with) but those sort of realizations are over. I'm almost 40, so if I'm not a man now, I'd better figure out what else I could be.
Since this is a patriarchal culture, I'm not forced to contemplate what it means to be a man all that much. It's better, one must suppose, than being a woman: as Hank Hill told Bobby: "It's called a double standard. Don't knock it, you got the long end of the stick." So the men's movement is largely a joke, and groups of men gathering together to pretend they are suffering is ludicrous.
It's not all higher salaries and burping whenever you want. Being a man means that the culture at large (other men especially) expect you to dampen your emotions as much as possible. It means stiffening into possible confrontation whenever another man is coming down the street toward you. It means that the fact I'm smaller than most other men is something I'm never able to forget. It means that I'm judged on how much money I make, how much I can lift, and how nice my shoes are. I'm sure there's much more to it, but I mostly take it for granted, because that's the way it is. If you have more specific questions about being a man, I'm happy to go there.
Oh, and I think about sex all the time.
How do you feel about having visible hair on your back?
Well, it's not visible to me, so why should I care? No, I don't too much mind. I'm not the kind of guy who's going to get waxed or something, so I've just gotten over it. I know that it's not considered attractive to the mainstream woman, but the wife doesn't seem to mind.
Why don't you experiment with your facial hair more, like make a green beard or cultivate a handlebar mustache?
The wife does mind this.
Well, the green hair thing I've explored, and beard hair is a lot like pubic hair: it's very hard to bleach. The handlebar mustache is for WWI fighter pilots, Barbershop quartet members, and irritatingly hip 20 year old boys.
