Amanda Hooton agrees. In a recent Age article (In search of the new male order 26/08/06) she writes:
the Snag was terribly sensitive, terribly right-on, and terribly prone to wearing a ponytail ... He vanished precisely at the moment men realised nobody wanted to have sex with a Snag. Interestingly, his passing was unmourned by women, who'd realised the same thing. The Metrosexual was always on a hiding to nothing, because no woman wants a man whose skin-care routine is better than hers.
So what does Amanda Hooton like in a man? One thing she appreciates is when men are physically protective toward her. She praises her father for showing concern when she catches a taxi alone at night:
Show me a man ... who can say to me at 9pm when I'm leaving the house: "I'm worried about you catching a taxi. I don't like it. Please call me if you feel worried."
She also thanks the taxi driver who,
waits, engine idling, until I get my key into my door in my dodgy neighbourhood and step safely inside.
Which brings me to something else I found in last Saturday's Age. It's a quote from Boris Pasternak:
Everything in the world must excel itself to be itself.
I don't know the original context of this line. However, it expresses something I believe to be true and the real reason for a man to try to live an ever more masculine life. When we do so we are more likely to have that very rewarding sense of living through what we really are. There is no longer a sense of a failure to engage or connect. But it doesn't happen in halves, or in a misguided attempt to find a feminine side; it requires that breaking through to something less ordinary in ourselves which, perhaps, Pasternak is alluding to in the quote above.
It’s irritating to observe the masculine traits that women self-evidently love in a man, while the political/media world tell them to ‘change’ their nature. The nature that men (being gentlemen) find attractive about women.
ReplyDeleteWhile it is no revelation that many (if not most) heterosexual women adore these stereotypical ‘masculine’ traits in men – it still leaves us facing the feminist wall. Women will not relinquish any feminist ideals, but STILL expect ‘gentlemen’ to lay down their coat over a puddle for them.
What I find abhorrent in the modern women (ie. Feminist), is that she becomes indignant when I refuse to be both a gentleman & her doormat. You cannot have both. To any thinking man, it is an embarrassment to be subjected to behavior that feminists themselves would find unconscionable.
Men have their hands tied politically & legally when it comes to gender issues, and consequently the relations that arise between men & women seem like very large (ridiculous) risks to a man. When faced with the very real possibilities of jail, fines, child custody, alimony, etc – most men are seeing relationships with women as a form of willful stupidity.
Women will have to be the ones to turn things around. Men are seen as the enemy, so there is nothing we can do. We tried to treat them like ladies and keep them safe in the past; but this was chauvinism. We tried to change into anything they wanted us to be (like SNAGS) – but they liked us even less.
No.
Older women who have lived through Feminist lies will have to teach young girls what is right. It’s not enough for women today to say, “Oh, but I’m not a feminist’ – while living in a culture that lets feminism speak ‘for’ women, and enjoying the political advantages they get from it.
Men have tried.
We’re damned if we do, and we’re damned if we don’t.
Most men have walked away from relationships with women (as the divorce rate & high promiscuity rate shows). We don’t respect women the way we used to, because men can see (in media & in politics) that it is almost always our fault. We want little to do with them because no matter how much a man says “yes dear” – he has never before (in all history) experienced the loathing that women heap on men today.
If men are always wrong. If men are constantly the oppressors, rapists and beasts – then I’m afraid most men will just walk away. When it comes to dealing with ‘emotion’, there is no recourse but to capitulate, or leave.
How can a husband/father/relationship (something that most women dearly want) be attainable for women – if the definition of S.C.U.M in the dictionary has a picture of a man next to it.
Once again – women like Amanda will have to chose which version of reality they want to follow. Accept & love men the way they are – or be without them. Men don’t ask women to change. We love the things they have that we don’t. In some bizarre way, feminism has convinced women that the thing they ‘should’ find attractive in a man are the qualities that aren’t attractive to ANY women.
And then we hear the phrase, “We can’t find any real men.”
Bobby.N