“A man is a God in ruins.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“God gave men both a penis and a brain, but unfortunately not enough blood supply to run both at the same time.” – Robin Williams
As promised, it’s the boys’ turn. Take your pick of the quotes; I’d personally love to know what Emerson was on about.
Man. Hmm. Masculinity. Double hmm. “Manhood” – says it all, really. It’s a fragile thing, this man-thing. I know women suffer a lot of strictures about what they should and shouldn’t be, but so do men, and I wonder sometimes if those social expectations aren’t a lot more damaging.
After all, men start off at a massive biological disadvantage. We’re all of us all female in the beginning, as a couple of X chromosomes. Then one of those mutates and goes male (Y; …why, indeed?) More boy embryos die (in fact more mutate to male than stay female, but there’s an extraordinary attrition rate and so more girls are born). Once out there, males are more likely to be colour-blind and left-handed. Later, they have more addictions and circulatory diseases and they die earlier. God, this is cheery.
So that’s the biology bit. (If you want more, see the very interesting piece in the BMJ, Dec 2003, by Sebastian Kraemer on The Fragile Male). The next bit’s more contentious and takes us into research world.
Human males are more likely to display social disorders, and there is some science which might explain this. They are far more likely to be suicidal (successful or not), criminal, dyslexic, violent and to be at either extreme of the intelligence spectrum. And stalkers. These charming traits might be biological; they might not. But society is still where most of the blame is laid. And let’s face it, once you’re an adult, you’re supposed to be able to control your own actions. Otherwise, it just gets really offensive.
Mae West said that only men would start every day by tying a noose around their necks. That kind of sums it up for me. It has long been a male-dominated world. It still is. We all still play (i.e. consent to, are complicit with) ridiculous gender roles (only excusable when they’re consenting games where all players know what they’re up to). But for goodness’ sake: if I was a world-dominating man, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t set myself up for such failure.
Women, it seems, are more at ease with transgressing gender roles, but men get very squeamish (in front of other men, mainly). No? Then kiss your best mate on the cheek, chaps. Prove you don’t care what other people (and that tends to mean ‘men’) think of you… All excuses in the comments box, please. Thank you!
Tricky Little Imp's Blog 
April 21, 2008 at 9:38 pm
aha, i see now what you eant by your penis envy mention.
well yes we are gods in ruins, we are each of us capable of anything and in fact everything. however we all fail. male and female. why? well i blame the brain. we think, which certainly is a good thing but we overthink everything we do and so ruin ourselves. it is a human failing and as we are all made in the image of god we are ruined gods. not just man. sorry emerson. and if we are all made in the image of god then who/what is god? an all powerful constantly changing being that cannot make up his or hers mind as to what he or she wants to be.and this leads you onto philosophy and theology… hmmmmm
we all have the power in our minds to do absoloutely anything. it is just a case of unlocking those parts that areunused. but if you really could do anything. would you do it? could you do it without thinking and overthinking the consequences? tricky.
April 21, 2008 at 9:41 pm
on a different point imp. as we all know, theft is widely considered a wrong thing. from societys point of view anyway. but what about theft from arts point of view? would it be wrong to steal items to create art? well i say steal, what i mean is illegaly borrow for a period of time.
and is it wrong to cover to creat a rection/ piece of art? if you saw a hill you liked and sneakily without permission placed something on the hill for yours and hopefully others enjoyment. easily removable, no permanent damage down. would that be wrong?
April 30, 2009 at 12:04 am
Yes we live in a male-dominated world, but it’s not a world of men. Many, many of the men in this world have become weak in their masculinity and resort to true domination, meanwhile the women take control of so much just because we men are not fulfilling our roles. Women want to trust us, to open up to us, and mostly we fail them. Where have all the men gone? See http://www.malexperience.com.
April 30, 2009 at 11:55 am
Interesting comment! Perhaps it’s less binary, though, than men not fulfilling pre-determined “roles”, and women “taking” control (presumably, “away” from men?).
Perhaps, instead, both sexes share stewardship for the society in which we live, and need to come to mature, responsible and flexible understandings, rather than try to work and live within rigid gender-led “roles”?