You think men get a bum rap? C.W. Nahumck sure does, and he’s not going to let any unfair stereotyping get in the way of a good burrito.
This week marks the final quarter of the academic year, which means that I’m one step closer to being a real adult—at least as real an adult as a 32-year-old perpetual student can feel. I heard it said once that graduate school is like another stage of adolescence. If so, it’s an entirely different form of awkwardness and confusion. At least those teenage years have an end point where the physical appearance starts to clear up and the acne goes away.
Of course, this isn’t year one for me, like so many others in my cohort. It’s the end of year six of graduate school. What does a guy who’s spent the last six years with his nose in books have to say about living a good life, about being a good man? Plenty, it turns out. (Plenty of questions, at least.)
I was in my first year of graduate school (a dual program in social work and divinity) when I had my first interaction with a male stereotype that made me stop and take notice. It happened like this: I was in the cafeteria waiting to warm up some food in the microwave. In front of me, a female student was heating up a burrito. When she opened the microwave door, the smell of the burrito was so good that I blurted out, “That smells great! When I get home, I’ll have to ask my wife if she could make me a burrito.”
“You know,” the girl responded, “you can make a burrito for yourself.”
I was speechless. This woman who did not know me assumed that she did. She assumed that I was somehow in the wrong for saying that my wife would cook for me. It didn’t matter that cooking is my wife’s hobby; it’s what she loves to do at the end of a hard day to unwind. It didn’t matter that when we’re in the kitchen making food together, or even when I’m trying to make food for her, she swoops in and takes over. It didn’t matter that her undergraduate focus was cultural anthropology with a personal focus on food anthropology. What mattered was that I fit in the box. I needed the label: bad man.
If I could travel back in time to that moment (don’t you wish you could do that?!), I would have asked the woman: “How would you like me to fit into your label? Do you want me to be a bad man by forcing my wife to do something against her will? Or, instead, should I make food for myself and not allow her to engage in an activity that she finds relaxing after a hard day of school and work?”
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I was stuck between a knife and a cutting board, waiting to be trimmed so that all that remained was the lean meat of my identity as a bad man, ready to be thrown into the frying pan and served with judgment.
With that said, I understand where she was coming from. I understand the frustration that comes from pursuing a degree that enables a person to become a minister while at the same time knowing that there are those who will be unable to take you seriously because you’re a woman. I understand that doing an internship with a rape crisis center or a battered women’s shelter is going to bring a woman in contact with men behaving badly over and over again in ways that prime someone to expect the worst from them.
But I have a problem with the stereotypes we peddle about men. Sometimes I feel that the world is screaming, “Toss out your men and lock the doors!”
My wife calls me a manist. After my repeated interactions with people on campus, it led me into a reactionary phase of my personal development. I looked at TV shows and advertisements where men are portrayed as idiots, creeps, and killers. I would call out the stereotypes for what they were. After about a year of this, my wife started calling me a manist. I suppose masculinist is too cumbersome a term.
What does it mean to be a manist? It doesn’t mean that I’m seeking equality in the same way that feminists do. I define it as someone who is concerned about the internal and external pressures that are put on men by a culture that sets them up to be something beyond their choosing. I, for one, don’t want to live down to a stereotype.
We need to change our culture and give men new tools for being “good.” This column will be a place for me to share ideas and hopefully incite positive change in our understanding of men. Welcome to my little little Manist corner of the net. I hope you’ll stick around and help me shatter some stereotypes.
Gender stereotypes affect all of us. It was through Women’s Studies classes that I first got a glimpse of just how much. I’m suddenly disappointed with this site, which, believe it or not, was praised in a blog by Ms. Magazine. A site run by “radical feminist extremists” similar to feministing.com, which is one of my favorite blogs. Feminists are against gender stereotyping, for ALL people. Don’t rage about the feminists, they should be your allies. We all want the stereotyping to end, for all of us. Sure we still get a bit touchy sometimes, but, like you, we’ve been… Read more »
Glad to come across this site…seem to be a lot of things like this popping up nowadays. It good to see society move beyond the Maxim stereotype about being a man in America…. But regarding Womens Studies…I too have had encounters with the zealots turned out by these programs, and it has never been good. Back in the 90’s, I signed up for a WS course at my college (and no, it wasn’t so I could get laid…it was either this or Logic 101, which I had ZERO chance of passing…) eedless to sa the instructor was a total ideologue… Read more »
“Sometimes I feel that the world is screaming, “Toss out your men and lock the doors!””
My good man, nobody is saying this as it would be a massive redundancy – we are already on the outside looking in.
And as for Burrito girl, given what universities are like you should consider yourself lucky she didn’t call Gloria Allred on you.
I think the Good Men Project is a great thing. I consider myself a feminist but at the same time, I’m just a regular working woman in my twenties, a wife and a mother. I think the lesson here is, men and women both need to take a look at their lives and their goals and bring the attention back home. A life and family isn’t build over night and it takes work by both spouses to grow something together. It’s not about egos and power, it’s not about titles and material things. At that end of the day, this… Read more »
A good man needs a rabid feminist in his life like a fish needs a bicycle.
Hi guys. This 60 year old would like to add some perspective gained over the years. If I ramble a bit, please be patient with the old man. I have watched with great interest and many times sadness, the lowering of standards of civility and the ever increasing shrill of “I am right and you are wrong” The instantaneous levels of communications with the computer, and all the associated electronic devices which provide an overwhelming cacophony of “experts” and details to numb the human soul. But one of the things I find really interesting about all this electronic gear is… Read more »
I’m glad you mentioned TV commercials, because that’s when my manism come out strong. While I don’t mind many commercials that make men look like idiots, there’s one wine commercial, which if the sexes were reversed, would never get on the air. Imagine a group of guys sitting on the back porch, drinking a beer that the women really want to have, so the women start acting around, in an attempt to get the men’s attention and maybe that beer. Would women complain? Yes, and a lot of men, too. A person can be a manist as well as a… Read more »
“This instills women with a vague, almost mystical sense that some manner of recompense is owed them simply because they are female—and traces of this feeling can percolate into the smallest transactions of life.” Wow, the part above is really the part that hits home! Wow man, something as simple as getting a burrito aye….WOW….. In comparison it’s like a woman saying “wow that ceder wood on this new sauna they installed at the gym smells GREAT, I’ll have to ask my husband if he could make me a sauna!” Your response: “You can make your own sauna” Wow, guys… Read more »
WOW what a great story. Yes women carry this with them now. I’ve actually started to do the same. Women have talked about engagement rings in front of me and I’ve told them “you can get your own wedding ring”. I only wish they said something about men being the provider so I could reply “provide for yourself” Anyway here is more about the boot camps young women attend and how it transforms them into our competition. It actually imbibes into their being and becomes a very dominate filter for their perception of the world in relation to men. You… Read more »