Jezebel
Edward Keenan writes a new blog called "Act Like A Man." He is one of those guys who feels superior to all the meatheads and misogynists and Maxim and insouciant unemployed selfish stoner types and psychotic hyperassholes modern masculinity comprises these days but he doesn't really derive much satisfaction from feeling superior so he's chosen to attack the problem with a blog aimed at deconstructing the various symptoms of this societal cancer and redefining manhood. (Pick-up artists, the bros before hoesism, etc.) It all started sarcastically, before he sort of swore off sarcasm, with Don Corleone-inspired column he wrote called Ask An Angry Man to a fictional emo depressive dude:
My advice to you, Deep Funk, is the same as The Don's — you could act like a man! I'm gonna write a self-help book for all the people like you who are always coming crying to me — "Oh, Angry Man, my parents were mean to me and now I'm screwed up." "Oh, Angry Man, I'm depressed and I can't leave the house." "Oh, Angry Man, I'm addicted to heroin and I can't stop taking it." "Oh, Angry Man, I started a war in Iraq and now everyone knows I'm evil."
Here's my three-step recovery program: 1). Act. 2). Like. 3). A man. Stand up, leave your house and get a job you hate. Go there every morning and spend eight or ten hours doing meaningless, mind-numbing work. Come home at night and stare blankly at the television and have mundane arguments about money and toilet seats with your wife. Then make love to her while you imagine she's Anna Kournikova. Sleep fitfully. Repeat every day for thirty-five years. Work up a powder keg of resentment and stew in quiet desperation. That's what your father did. That's what your grandfather did.Until his job was outsourced to Indonesia!
The state of guys feeling they have no clear role in society may be analagous to the worker who's lost his job in the corset factory because women are no longer expected to cinch in their mid-sections before leaving the house. He can definitely point to the closing of the factory as the source of his woes, but it will ultimately be unproductive to dwell on that. The industry he built his life on ain't coming back. And if he can separate himself from the personal consequences (his inability to pay his rent, his feelings of no longer having anything to contribute), he might acknowledge that it is a positive social good that restrictive, swoon-inducing garments are no longer normal underwear. But he does need to find a new role for himself, and that may involve looking at the old skill set and seeing what will be transferable. Maybe there's some other job in which he can find himself once again contributing to the economies of his household and his society.Hmmm. An interesting thought, indeed; not glib enough for great blog posting though, which reminds me of something: the problem with manhood is that it's not so much as a lost art as a lost trade, sort of like writing for a website that needs to hits to sustain itself, and hits require getting to the point and letting the commenters handle the Talmudic shit, even if you're not quite sure what the point is because just pondering the point is a luxury afforded by the absence of necessity, which as Ed reminds us is the mother of invention, and what's left to invent? Nothing, Ed, there's nothing left for you and me to invent, and sure that can get depressing but pretty soon you'll have to post eight times a day and you'll no longer have the luxury to reflect on all that; you'll just churn it out like you're laying bricks like granddad, and your stoner friends will eventually come too, because it's a dying industry in the jaws of recession, and eventually there will be a host of new necessity-borne things to hate about life. And I'm not sure if this is related, but last night a guy I know told me last night some girl thought he was a misogynist, and I asked if he was a misogynist, and he said, "Only inasmuch as I'm a misanthrope." I don't know if you got what you needed from that, Ed, but I'm off to the bar now, because it's Friday and none of us are really as misanthropic as we think we are when there's alcohol around.
Act Like A Man [The Walrus]
Comments
I practice "Chick-Before-Dicks" myself.
Carry on.
since when is sucking up to a job you hate specificly "man's" territory. my mom did it for 35 years. she wasn't acting like a "man" as far as i knew.
Sweet Moe. Reading you is like going down the Yellow Brick Road, and if you just follow it, you may have to go through a forest of apple throwing trees and creepy flying monkees, but eventually you'll get somewhere that'll be good and make sense, even though it may not seem so immediately.
I love reading you.
I should say something smart, but it's getting late, so I'll just ask if anyone else thinks he looks a tad like a younger/calmer Mr. DeMartino from Daria in that pic?
So... this guy rips off Fight Club and gets Kudos for it?
...and the 4th seal was broken...
Damn, now I really want a beer. Stupid west coast time zone shit.
@ceejeemcbeegee: Holy Cow CeeJee, that's 2 seals in 24 hours, you've got us on the fast track to hell! There's only 7 of those things and you've got us on #4!
Ack, that was wonderful. Me thinks we think alike. And bars always tend to help the misanthropy--I'm really such a fake life-hater.
"the problem with manhood is that it's not so much as a lost art as a lost trade."
Yes, but a trade that they nonetheless get paid more for due to their Sry gene (determines male development).
oh moe, you crazy fucking dyke you, i haven't been to Jez all week and this was the first thing i read. thank god i'm stoned.
hearts!
Eh, your bar is my fridge. Off to eat my feelings!
"Only inasmuch as I'm a misanthrope." I would definitely sketch out some more time for that guy.
Actually, I like him. I think maybe "Act like a man" might be better phrased as "Act like a goddamn adult," but I'm glad its not b/c it totally leaves room for me to start the equivalent blog for women entitled "Sack up, ho!"
@JessicaLovejoy: Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, ACK!: You just reminded me/made me realize that I have a really weird crush on Mr. DeMartino. He's the one with the popping eye, right? I think he reminded me of Willem Dafoe.
You know, this hard-as-nails, life-is-a-jungle stuff has been kicking around since Hector was a pup.
The short hand is, if you want to be miserable, you will be - if you don't, you won't.
The whole "glass half full, glass half empty" conundrum falls apart if you're just excited that there's a glass.
I'm with @shellybean. Too many people need to be told that, not just the men. And @insert_namehere, you are also so right. I just wish the miserable didn't get so much attention. Damn you, daytime television.
According to every Canadian I've polled, The Walrus and everything/one associated with it sucks baby seal balls.
@HeatherNumber1: I am Canadian. And I like The Walrus.
@HeatherNumber1: Yeah, what is up with that? I'm American; I've been living in Canada about four years, and I had high hopes for The Walrus. But man, was there ever a magazine less fun to read?
I try, but it's like slogging through the La Brea tar pits.
@lisarae: Oh! I hadn't seen your comment when I posted.
I like the stuff they write about in the Walrus a lot. The style, not so much.
@Augusta: Yeah, I know what you're saying. My boyfriend actually illustrates for The Walrus from time to time, and he never understands what they are trying to go for. It's so hit and miss.
Sorry- I am stuck on "act like a man"- all I can hear is "walk like a man" everything else beyond that is blather.
Acting like a man means liking to play with the girls as well as the boys.
Ew, guy writing. I'm so fucking sure.
@ceejeemcbeegee:You are soooo right. So much for original thought. I don't necessarily disagree on the sentiment...for both men and women...but it kinda loses its power when packaged in latently whiny prose. Keep your misery to yourself I say...and that goes for both men and women as well.
Since when is 'acting like a man' a lot trade? Last time I checked it there was still colonialist wars going on everywhere and outdated ideas of masculinity are pretty integral to such projects.
I would agree with the comments about Fight Club if it weren't for the fact that Fight Club was misogynist and this guy clearly doesn't have such intentions.
The Walrus is our version of Harper's and it has the same flavour. Yes I I spelled that word the Canadian way, how quaint of me.
@judithvansteppes:Last time I checked it there was still colonialist wars going on everywhere and outdated ideas of masculinity are pretty integral to such projects.
You know you just DIRECTLY equated "ideas of masculinity" with "war". You just blamed the whole fundamental conception of war on a single gender.
I'll put this as diplomatically as I can: you may want to re-evaluate that position if you want to be taken seriously by anyone on this globe.
@judithvansteppes: @Pope John Peeps II:
See...this is what I mean. Whatever happened to the good old days when we all lived lives of quiet(read:not whiney) desperation?
@Pope John Peeps II:
Let me break it down for you. The aforementioned blog makes a tongue in cheek reference to the idea of 'acting like a man', as in, the performance of OUTDATED ideas of masculinity. Perhaps before you work yourself into a huff you ought to read what someone actually writes; the idea that OUTDATED masculinity, one which was always a fiction men were supposed to live up to, not an essential natural fact, is LINKED with militarism, is not exactly an outrageous statement and it was pretty clear that I was not making the assumption that war is the fault of gender alone. Discussing antiquated and false ideals of masculinity does not equal blaming masculinity itself for war. Let me put this as diplomatically as I can; calm down and read more closely next time
If by "act like a man" you mean party hard, play sports, drink a lot, play around when you're married, take credit for other people's work, blame others for your misfortune, then no, don't. If by that you mean stand up, take responsibility for your situation, remember your responsibilities to yourself and your family, never say die, do what it takes to get going again, then yes, do that.
It's pretty easy to say stuff like this and it makes for good blog theatre and hey, it got this dude a mention on a prominent Internet web site. What it isn't is a blueprint for true manhood. Tigers can't suddenly change their stripes -- whatever kind of male role models a guy had as a boy are going to follow him into manhood. His isn't going to find it so easy to reform himself if his home life as a kid was filled with abusive relationships, half-assed parenting, and a lack of accountability, not to mention a lack of positive reinforcement.
If you're a guy, and your lifes sucks, well, you put yourself there by the choices you made. The only way you're getting out is to make new choices and hopefully better informed ones.
@Pope John Peeps II: Judith may not want to blame men for wars, but I'm personally gonna go ahead and say I'm OK with the statement.
Men start wars.
Yep. I'm OK with that. Not a lot of nuance, but true enough to be stated without reservations.
"Nothing, Ed, there's nothing left for you and me to invent, and sure that can get depressing but pretty soon you'll have to post eight times a day and you'll no longer have the luxury to reflect on all that (...)"
I think this is the first time I have seen this shift, but it is squirmy, so bear with me. Guy loses his job and continues blogging, which is a sort of "non-job". Moe associates this non-job with general inventiveness, and by extension other jobs.
I think that the transitive property applies: now any job is a "non-job", so much ephemera we no longer have the time or will to care about.
Landmark.
This got no attention over the weekend? It was easily the best post of the past week. Yes, "being a man" is definitely a lost art or lost trade or whatever you want to call it. I'm not exactly sure if there were ever that many "men" historically to begin with, but, pathetically, there are few around today. More notably, it just seems like I've heard so many stories where an adult male acted like so much like a child that it almost seems unrealistic or exaggerated, but the stories are true and indeed it seems that adult males are either incredibly selfish, or cowardly, or both. I'm disappointed, however, that women use this as ammunition to "hate" us males overall. The thing is, some of us are going to be honorable and mature no matter what the other guys do and no matter what you think of us and no matter how any of you act (one easily considers mercenary tactics when dealing with "Sex and the City"-inspired adult females), and it's disappointing if you're going to be too wretched to enjoy the time spent with us. As always, it is a challenge for members of both genders to look upon one another kindly, despite all the history and bad blood, and hope for the best instead of fearing the worst.
The blog is actually quite endearing. But it describes an ideal manhood (get the work done, live your life with meaning, take responsibility for your actions, stop whinging) that I have seen in women much more than in men. Perhaps women are just better at being adults?
@dayglo: If you think only men start wars then you are pretty ignorant. Not nuanced...but I'm gonna go ahead and say it. Ever heard of Katherine the Great? Cleopatra? Joan of Arc? Must everything reduce down to trite feminist slogans? I think Katherine the Great would be insulted by the fact that you would say a woman could start a war...among other women in history.
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