Count me among the people who were flabbergasted that some men were offended by the now-infamous Gillette ad. How could anyone take offense at the message, "Don't be a jerk. And while you're happily not being a jerk, why not discourage your friends from being jerks too? Oh, and buy our razors." What surprised me even more was that many of the men who got butt-hurt about the ad were men who I am fairly sure are not jerks, and who find it distasteful when other men act in the ways that ad portrays in a negative light.
But on further reflection, I remembered that men are caught on the back foot in this time in history, with its women-led change of gender roles, a fait accompli by the second-wave feminists of my generation.
My own personal perspective on this comes in part from having been married to a man who was just, simply, not as driven and goal-oriented as I was. I met him in chiropractic school. Chiropractors (like dentists and podiatrists) don't often work as employees for a company or another person, and if we do, it's most commonly short-term or fill-in arrangement rather than a long-term career choice. This fact alone made the profession, in retrospect, a poor choice for him: he suffered from clinical anxiety that worsened whenever he was put in a position of being in charge and making decisions. I, on the other hand, took to the long hours and responsibilities of entrepreneurship and patient care like a fish to water. Within a decade, I built our city's largest chiropractic, acupuncture, and massage clinic from scratch.
And so, when our children came along, I took minimal time off for maternity, and he became a househusband.
That's when his humiliation began. He expected macho men to look down their noses at him; that didn't bother him much. But the most insidious conversations he had, over and over, with supposedly enlightened, forward-thinking women and men, went like this:
"So, what do you do for a living?"
"I'm a househusband."
"Oh...so, do you have a home-based business?"
"No, I'm a homemaker. I take care of our two children, cook, and keep house."
"Are you an artist then?"
Needless to say, his confidence as well as his enjoyment of the fun parts of housekeeping and child-rearing took a major punch in the stomach every time this happened. The playgroups and book clubs and coffee klatsches of stay-at-home moms also didn't embrace him. In fact, he met expressions of alarm on the playground and school-bus stop when he walked his 6'2" frame up to the neighborhood moms gathered there. He was completely adrift socially, without support, sympathy, or role models.
In the meantime, I felt the yearning to be at home with my children, an emotion which everything I heard and read told me was a normal part of being a woman and mother. I was not, I confess, terribly supportive of him (in any way except financially) at that point, mainly because I was envious of his time in our home, with our kids.
Have you ever had one of those "a-ha!" moments where you realize, with a sinking feeling, that you had been ignoring a part of another person's reality? Here's mine:
I was working on a patient, a 60-ish man, and making light conversation. He asked if I had children. I said yes, but then launched into a lament about how my practice kept me away from them, and how I was missing so much of their day-to-day growth and discovery that my husband was getting to experience. Cue the violins.
"It's kind of frustrating," I confided.
"I know exactly what you mean," he responded. "I felt exactly the same way when my kids were young, but there's nothing you can do about it. Someone has to be the provider."
This man was a hard-nosed, skilled tradesman from the generation where men worked and women stayed home. I couldn't imagine him sitting around with his friends over a beer and moaning about how much he wished he was at home with his kids. I might have been the only person he'd ever shared that emotion with.
I realized that my inner conflict was not necessarily part of being specifically a woman and a mother, but of being a parent. That moment stayed with me and it resonates with me now, even though my son and daughter are grown (and making their own difficult choices in the world of today). I can understand the resentment towards women's new range of choices, just as I understood the rage of my mother's generation at being denied them. I get it that men who've put up with other men's abuse for refusing to be jerks, so relentless that they gave up and quietly let it pass (not unlike the decision to ignore relentless catcalls, ladies!), are now being told that they have to confront their tormentors, not for their own benefit, but for women's.
I do get it.
I think it's time for us women to use a little bit of the empathy our gender is supposed to be so much better at, and understand how this can be so. Maybe it's also time to let the guys work out their choices and actions and reactions, without judgement, while maintaining our own clear boundaries.
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