Month: June 2012

Woman after I hold door for her: Good to see chivalry’s not dead in NYC.
Me: I wasn’t being chivalrous, ma’am. I was being polite.

integrity means that you’re the same person in public as y’are in private. In other words, it’s being internally consistent. And consistent with my concept of what a real man is, I feel that chivalry’s an outdated concept.

Its basic tenet’s that women are weak, different, and need special treatment.

I disagree. It’s the same reason that I won’t buy a woman a drink but I’ll buy my friends drinks.

There’s this woman I know who’s ultra-feminist but feels men should always hold the door for women.

Me: Why? Because they’re weak?
Her: No, just because they’re supposed to.
Me: So they should stay home and take care care of the kids? Because they’re supposed to?
Her: That’s different.

Put another way: I don’t believe that we should lower our behaviour for half the population so much as we should raise our behaviour for all of the population.

One should hold doors for others because it’s the polite thing to do, not because someone has two X-chromosomes insteada one.

But it cuts both ways. That same friend is incensed by wage differences between men and women but doesn’t feel a woman should fight in the army.

I think that when a woman is held up to the same standards of men, they rise to the occasion.

For better or worse.

Coach: Don’t be easy on her, she’s tough!
Me (beginning to wrestle with female teammate): I won’t be…
Her: (slams knee on my stomach)

Location: looking out at the rain
Mood: relaxed
Music: She can do the same thing to the clique you know
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Me: (eyeing wife) You look really good this morning.
Her: (walking out door) Logan. It’s Monday morning. It’s not happening…

Work’s been so busy that I’ve neglected friends so last week finally met up with a number of them. While out, however, I was reminded that – after all these years – Tequila is not my friend.

Stupid tequila.

The other thing I did this past weekend was catch up on some television. This segment aired yesterday about the changing views of what it means to be a man. Found it interesting cause what I think makes a man differs greatly from a number of people around me.

For example, a fella I work with said “Real men watch sports.” Another person said that men curse, it’s what they do. Yet another one says that men don’t order drinks with umbrellas in them.

Alla which I find misses the point.

Since the beginning of time, because of our physical advantages, a man’s role’s been physical. This meant that we were the providers and protectors. This served us well historically cause mosta human existence’s hinged on our ability to push or pull something.

Providing for and protecting our 13 square feet of the world.

But consider Facebook and Google. Here’re companies where 99.99% of their worth are  assets that cannot be pushed or pulled. It’s imagined.

Ditto with most work – consider the number of people you know that make money pushing or pulling something versus people that spend their times thinking up stuff.

So what’s a man’s role in this modern world where physical strength’s been supplanted by mental acuity?

• There’re those that ignore the physical. That’s not good, we’re still physical creatures.
• Then there’re those that ignore the mental. That’s not good either cause survival in today’s modern world requires mental acumen.

If I gotta guess, it requires both. It always has. Sports are sanitized violence. Some less sanitized than others. It’s true that I don’t watch any sports, but I hit the gym (almost) daily.

These other things – like watching sports or cursing – have the veneer of manhood but nothing to do with it actually. As with most things, it has an air of truth to it but no real truth it.

If it has nuthin to do with providing or protecting, I say it’s got a lot more to do with mental masturbation than being a man.

Although even I draw the line at an Appletini.

That’s mostly true.

Location: my old chair, waiting for my new chair
Mood: rejuvenated
Music: no end to the lengths I’ll go to. Hunting high and low
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