Everyone else is doing it

I’m going to link to that rant by Kim du Toit ¹. Being a man whose only problem with Queer Eye is that weird thing they have against mono-brows, du Toit’s so-called “essay” is the funniest thing I’ve read in a while. His basic thesis is that men in the West have been “pussified” by the women’s movement, and you’d better give me my penis back or else men are going to “become a footnote to history”, or something. It’s already inspired a pretty funny rejoinder, not to mention some serious soul searching on my part as to how the following facts might have escaped me:

• Cowboys n’ Indians is “a variation” of good guys vs. bad guys.


• It’s wrong to tell men that violence is bad. Apparently violence is good. Yay violence!


• It’s wrong to be drugging-up little boys with Ritalin. Just keep on medicating them girls, though.


• “The process of male pussification” in Europe “is almost complete”. Also, men in Italy.
  
  

• “America is…a culture dominated by one figure: Mother. It wasn’t always so: there was a time when it was Father who ruled the home, worked at his job, and voted”. Of course, fathers still vote, so this can only mean that the Suffragettes should’ve been keep outta sight.
  
  

• Single-motherhood is akin to a punishment, as in: “Some women deserve to be single moms” ². This reflects an odd conception of either punishment or parenting, I’m not sure which. Also, the information I have to the effect that some women want — or at least prefer — to be single mothers, is apparently wrong. Thanks for clearing that up, du Toit.
• I haven’t been in a fight for ten years. Therefore, I am not a man ³.
• Advertising execs are “girly-men”. Also, John Singleton.
• Jim Belushi was apparently a man, and not a woman. I had no idea. Condoleeza rice is apparently a man, and not a woman. Again, I had no idea. In fact, I’m still not sure about this.
• “I want our government to be more like Dad — kind, helpful, but not afraid to punish us when we fuck up, instead of helping us excuse our actions”. The American government needs to be harder with criminals. Unrelatedly, incarceration rates hit record highs.
• “Never mind that it’s simplistic — we like simple, we are simple, we are men”. Real men are apparently simpletons, and glorify in that fact. The “we like simple, we are simple, we are men” line makes me wonder whether his misconceptions about advertising ex-execs might be holding him back from a career in which he’d excel.
• It’s not just the French who think that books are gendered: “I want our literature to become more male, less female”. Can anyone tell me why it feels so counter-intuitive that a self-declared “real man” might read “literature”?
• If you’re a “real man”, treating women like objects is good. Unless of course you’re Muslim “real man”, in which case it’s bad ⁴.
• The raping of women by young men is a “reaction” against the pussification of society or some such. Not only is this an extremely odd, not to mention offensive, variation of blaming-the-victim, but the nugget of truth that it contains ⁵ would tend to suggest that the pussification of society is in fact rather a long way from completion.
• Gays are “butt-bandits”, in that they are apparently guilty of butt-banditry. Fuck I hate bandits.
• To attract women, I need to dress up in “a naval aviator’s uniform”, like the swoon-inducing George Bush. So we’re dressing up like we’re in the Navy, yet we hate them butt-bandits. Makes sense.

Read the essay if you think I must be stretching what it contains. It’s worth reading on account of all the gut-laughing you’ll do. Incidentally, at one point in his rant, du Toit notes a fact. He tries, and in my opinion fails, to fit it into his argument. That fact is the stereotypical dichotomy of the perfect, rock-like wife, as against the flawed, comically-inept husband, both of whom you see so often in sitcoms, that is if you actually watch sitcoms, which you really shouldn’t cause they suck.

Anyway, it occurs to me that rather than being biased against and badgering toward men, this stereotype essentially gives them and their foibles a pass, even when they’re complete dumb-asses ⁶. So on the one hand, the stereotype says to men, it’s ok to not be perfect. For women, on the other hand, the stereotype practically mandates that they live up to an impossible ideal. Home Improvement, to take du Toit’s example, casts the father as a loveable rogue, who gets to spend all his time playing with his toys, at “work” and at home, while the mother raises the kids, cooks the meals, puts up with Tim Allen being a moron, solves his problems for him, solves the kids’ problems for them etc.

You tell me, how does this fit the point of his “essay”? I’m a little confused.

1. via pretty much every blog under the sun, but most recently Gummo’s[↩]
2. emphasis in original, which applies to all quotes[↩]
3. anatomy notwithstanding[↩]
4. and you’d better stop before we bomb your country[↩]
5. ie, women being raped[↩]
6. think Homer Simpson, for example[↩]