Rhinocrisy

In the course of a book group discussion of Self-Made Man, a book about a woman who passes as male in order to explore men’s world, a friend asked, “women consciously redefined their gender. When and how will men do the same?” My reply follows.

I was raised among very few men and many women. By the time I was 16, I was fluent in both traditionally female tasks like cooking and dishwashing (I’ve never taken to dusting) and in (what I’ve since learned are) more typically female mental processes: seeing rape entirely from the victim’s perspective, distrusting competition, abhorrence of violence, a strong belief in listening. I let some typically male skills fade in the process — I ditched my 10-year-old’s fascination with computer programming, I never took part in organized sports, I actively avoided the horrific group male bonding games of getting drunk and going to strip clubs and picking up girls by lying to them and then laughing about it all. It never surprised me to be an outsider in high school or even in college, as I had been raised to believe that was the more honorable place. But as time went on and one crush after another told me how great a brother I was and then complained about her date-rapist boyfriend, as opportunities for travel and jobs and other new experiences were handed off freely to the most competitive and aggressive asses, I eventually started to learn to play the game. Today I am nowhere near as gentle and emotional and accepting and listeningful as I was 20 years ago. I still carry a reflexive distrust of men (which causes its own problems) and I still can’t throw a football 15 yards to save my life. But I now work in an environment that is very male-dominated, where I got hired in part because of my aggressive pursuit of the job, my ability to say, hell, if nobody else wants to barge in and talk to the boss and demand an interview that’s their (and often her) problem. I have found that a lot of women in relationships — including women who seem feminist and egalitarian in everyday life — deeply want a strong, decisive, pushy, “ravishing” lover. In short, playing by The Rules and being an asshole man is still very rewarding, while the voluntary sacrifice of power and privilege much of the time is rewarding only in that it lets a guilt-ridden guy like me sleep better at night.

This is a long way of saying that the problem of male power is largely an incentive problem. Every day, we all — including those of us who try to be conscious of this stuff — reward pushy asshole rapist men and their female imitators while allowing more talented, beautiful, caring people to fail in one endeavor or another. It takes constant vigilance in every field to change this. So far as I can see, creating better incentives and structures is not a task that requires groups of men to hang out together in the woods (which as Joel implies, can often amplify the less salutory characteristics even of the sweetest guys you’ll ever meet) so much as it requires everyone to speak up whenever they see injustice or what they see as fucked-up tastes and demands on the part of other people and institutions. That’s my sense, anyway.