Category: Heterosexual Men

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I enjoy Slate’s advice columns (think Dear Abby for a variety of different topics) because they are generally entertaining to read and eye opening in what people get upset about. There was a recent letter that alarmed me because I think it was over reaction on the part of the columnists (JENÉE DESMOND-HARRIS AND LIZZIE O’LEARY).

It is behind a pay wall so you might have trouble retrieving so I will summarize the issue. A husband and a wife (30 plus years of marriage) were traveling with friends who had a college aged daughter. The husband took surreptitious pictures of the other couple’s daughter in her bikini. The girl was in public places in all these pictures — walking in front of him and at the pool. The husband clearly was sneaking photos of the young woman.

The wife later was looking through their shared vacation pictures and found the pictures of the young woman. The woman confronted her husband because she thought it was creepy and the husband gave a bull shit story about it. He told her he thought the woman could be a model and he was checking this out. He thought she was making a big deal out of nothing. This freaked out the wife who wrote the Slate columnists to get their take on it.

Desmond-Harris and O’Leary’s response, to me, seems to be an over reaction. The husband is a creep. He needs to be taken to task. The wife needs to go through his computer and see what he is up to as they doubt if this is the only time he has taken pictures of girls in bikinis. She could find something so much worse so she should. Then they started talking about whether the girl and her parents should be warned about the husband’s behavior which they seemed to be conflicted about. Finally, they advised the woman to never let her husband be alone with that young woman ever again.

Huh? How about a simple — your story is bullshit and you better cut it out or one day somebody is going to catch you and everyone is going to think you are a creep.

The woman is an adult and was in a public place in her bikini. Anyone could have taken a picture of her. How many people take pictures of other people who haven’t a clue that they are the model. Yes there is a protocol to ask people if it is all right to take your picture but realistically how often is that done? If you are in a public place, and someone likes your looks, they are free to take your picture.

The wife had access to the pictures. He clearly didn’t think it was a big deal or else he would have deleted the pictures which he knew she had access to. He wasn’t exactly hiding his behavior. When the wife confronted him, he was embarrassed. He put two and two together and realized how other people might view these pictures. Yes, he made up a unbelievable excuse which he should be called out on but, again in my eyes, that is about it.

Then the columnist determined that the man should never be left alone with the girl ever again. What? We are talking about a grown woman — a young woman yes but a college aged woman who surely at this stage of her life has learned to handle herself with men. More irritating for me is the woman had been married to the man for over 30 years. The wife never saw any evidence that her husband went beyond taking pictures of one beautiful girl in a bikini. This is quite a jump from taking a picture of one adult woman to much more egregious behavior that the man somehow now poses a threat to young women everywhere.

He made a mistake, given his wife’s reaction — one that he isn’t likely to make again. I think, given the lack of any other evidence, the husband should be given the benefit of the doubt. He knows how to behave in front of women and should be allowed to be alone with the young woman.

Then Desmond-Harris and O’Leary discuss whether to involve the woman’s parents. Again, what? The woman is an adult not a naive 15 year old. She has gone beyond the age where her parents have any responsibility over her actions or her life. I personally don’t believe anyone should be told but if you must tell someone — it is the college aged woman and not her parents. This is infantilizing a grown woman.

Men like to see women in bikinis. They sometimes do stupid things because they like to see women in bikinis. The woman doesn’t even know it happened. Why create a problem where there is none? It seems to me that the wife’s big problem is not the pictures but her husband’s lame excuse about why he took the pictures. This is a matter between the man and his wife alone. No one else needs to be involved and the only action required is telling him to knock it off until he can come up with a better reason for taking surreptitious pictures of women in bikinis.

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I was watching the trial by combat joust in the new Game of Thrones iteration “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” and it dawned on me on how attracted human beings are to violence. People are willing to joust and people are willing to watch jousting even though there was a good chance that somebody would, at the very least, get maimed or, worse still, be killed; furthermore blood sports have a long history in humanity.

The modern world makes a show of caring more about the athletes in their games but the danger still exists (think boxing, rugby, football, hockey, Formula One). These men risk their bodies and possibly their lives to entertain us.

Some observations here:

1.The participants are largely men. There is something innate in men to show their bravery by risking their health and lives. Some men like to rumble. I knew a guy who liked to get in bar fights. He would arrange situations where he might have to defend his “honor.” His honor was broadly defined as anything that irritated him, things like tailgating on a highway or running into him in a crowded bar. I generally thought his honor wasn’t at stake and a simple apology would suffice but he felt differently. The show of physical courage is important to men.

2. A lot of people like to watch these displays of physical courage. Millions of people watch football games and boxing matches — knowing full well that these men are risking their bodies for their entertainment. Even though they would like to detach the idea of this as courage, most people in the audience for these events would largely agree with this idea of physical courage. It is important to them to know there are men capable of this type of courage.

3. These ideas are pretty much locked into our definition of courage. As this appears to have been going on for as long as humans have been in civilizations, speaks volumes of the importance of violence in civilization. I can give all kinds of rational reasons why this shouldn’t be so, that it is insanity for a man to risk his future brain for a Super Bowl ring now but I am fairly certain it will fall on deaf ears. In order to prove his courage, a man must risk his body to prove it and this is the way things have been for a very long time.

What I am trying to figure out is why society’s approach to violence is to treat it as some aberration instead of fundamental to the nature of the male of our species. So much of what humans profess to think about something has nothing to do with how we feel about it. Men want to box. People want to watch boxing. Saying that they shouldn’t box or enjoy boxing fails to deal with the reality of the situation. When someone screams fight in high school parking lot, the people rushing to the fight are not running to break up the fight but rather trying to catch the action before it ends.

I wish I had answers but I don’t. But completely quashing this very strong emotion in humans and making them wrong, doesn’t stop people from having them. It is irrational and inexplicable but despite our best efforts to reform and our continued disapproval of physical violence, it persists. Let’s face it, humans like to rumble.

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Billy Eichner’s recent gay RomCom called Bros failed to pull in the box office revenue it was expected to. Eichner went on to complain that there was some homophobic backlash against the film. I am sure there is something to that but I am also pretty sure that billing it as a RomCom may have had more to do with it. RomComs are not for everyone — particularly straight men. That’s why RomComs are also know as Chick Flicks. They simply appeal to women more than men.

I, for example, am bored by action pictures. I found the Bourne films a terrific bore — one long chase scene without any plot whatsoever. At least that was my opinion, however, many other people loved the movie and they went to in droves. So if you invited me to a Gay Action film, I probably will decline because it is just something I am not interested in. I find it difficult to believe that any of the straight men I know would willingly attend a RomCom movie, much less a gay RomCom. It has nothing to do with gay either and everything to do with RomCom.

So I don’t think it particularly fair for Eichner to complain about homophobia. He could be correct, but, it is just as likely, that he is wrong. There is no way of knowing until someone digs deeper and asks why didn’t you see this movie. Until then, I think we should give the audience the benefit of the doubt and accept the fact that a lot of straight men don’t want to see RomComs.