Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Emasculation

You learn a lot about people and their perceptions when you're a stay-at-home dad. Men see you differently than women. Conservative women see you differently than liberal women. Of course, everyone makes certain assumptions about you.

A lot of men equate position (job title) or gross income with self-worth. These men cannot talk about themselves without mentioning their jobs. When they introduce themselves they will, almost without fail start with "I'm John. I'm a Chemical Engineer over at DuPont". If given enough time, they'll eventually run out of ways to impress you with their talk about work, and they'll be forced to move on. Only then will they bring up their hobbies (if they have any), kids, and wives.

To these people, men are their job, or in some cases, men are what they produce. Anything else simply doesn't register with them. It's always fun to meet these types, because they are so visibily uncomfortable with my situation. Their reactions are priceless. They'll look at the ground and shuffle their feet... or the less polite ones will look at me like I have two heads. In variably there will be a lot of head shaking and the oft repeated, "I could never do that".

Conservative women aren't as fun, but you really can't help but love them. In general they make no assumptions. This is strikly different from the liberal women who immediately assume all sorts of things. Ahhh... liberals... taste like chicken...

See, to a liberal women all masculine men fit the career-oriented type that I described above. Masculinity boils down to materialism with them. They see it as greed and the quest for power. It's therefore natural for them to assume that a man who stays at home with the kids is either totally unmasculine by nature (the only good kind for them) or has been reduced to castrati by his wife.

You can imagine that onl-line I bring out the worst in all of these people. Everyone who meets me now assumes that all of my toys and Alpha-male antics are bluster. That I'm madly running around trying to convince myself, and the world, that I really am still a man.

Those who knew me before know that there has been no change what-so-ever.

This is what's so confounding to liberal women. They've been taught their whole lives that men like me don't exist. "All men are career driven, and they'll love their careers far more than they'll love you!" shouts the Feminist's Guide to Finding a Suitable Breeding Partner.

Poor girls... They've been told their whole lives that what they want a "sensitive" man. They seek that out, and what they end up with is a little wimp. A little limp wristed pansy that became that way, because he thought it would get him a chick.

Of course they hate the guy their with for being such a useless little wuss. This explains their near universal annimosity towards me. They see me and think of their rediculous little husband or boyfriend... the pussy... and then imagine pretending to be a man. Once they've projected their hated for their husband or boyfriend on to me... well... it's easy to predict the outcome. They hate me. As if its somehow my fault that Cosmo lied to them.

The intersting thing though, is how this compares to the reactions of liberal females when they meet me in person.

Like I said... My Femi-Nazi next door neighbor ended up moving to Texas to shack-up with a Cowboy.

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