WOMEN, WHALES AND WHOPPERS !!!

[Daanyeer]

Source: mensdaily
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
By Paul Elam


Recently I went on a whale watching trip in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in Washington State. The boat was captained by a woman and the mechanic on board was also female.

About halfway into the trip the unthinkable happened. The ships engine shut down and we were dead in the water. The mechanic leapt into action but an hour later we were still not moving, with no sound from the engine room save some high pitched swearing and the occasional clang of a dropped (or thrown) tool. Several times the mechanic came topside, looking pasty white from the stress, asking lots of questions for which the captain had no answers.

Resigned to the reality of the situation, they used the radiophone on board to call a guy on the mainland who actually knew how to fix the problem. I must say they operated the radiophone quite smoothly.

Two hours and plenty of step by step instructions later, we were chugging through the water again, enjoying the sight of Orcas.

Now, I have no problem that any mechanic gets some help from the more qualified. Happens all the time, though we usually hope it takes less time to figure out what you don’t know.

And the fact that the mechanic was female doesn’t explain her lack of skills. There are lots of bad mechanics in the world. Finding a good one can be more challenging than spotting a humpback.

But consider what happened when the motor was finally repaired. When the mechanic came up to the deck after we were running, the captain announced over the loudspeaker, “See there, ladies and gentlemen, when you want something done right, you get a woman to do it.”

The women on board immediately launched into a vigorous ovation. Some of the men were clapping too, though I couldn’t say how many. I can’t count and roll my eyes at the same time.

A couple was sitting across from me. The woman gently elbowed her husband and said, “See? See?” Her tone was haughty, as though five thousand years of stereotypes had just been erased. The man just nodded his head silently in acquiescence. The gesture said, “Of course, darling. Women rule.”

That obsequious nod, which the man had obviously perfected with years of practice, has become a staple of male survival and women’s self-esteem. It is the nonverbal version of “Yes, dear.” and it is no longer just the patronizing parlance of men who know better than to disagree with the missus. It has become the universal dialogue of deceit, the language of the lie, the baffling BS of men and women in the new age.

The rule is this: no matter what women say, no matter how ridiculous, agree with them. Women can do anything men can do? Sure, no problem. Just don’t bring up sports, not even golf, or any of the myriad of physical things where women cannot compete. Women are more enlightened and spiritually evolved than men? Absolutely. Just don’t mention it to baby seals. Yes, men killed them. But women smilingly wore the fur. Women are the gentler, kinder sex? Of course. Please remind them of this in divorce court, and every time a woman slaps or humiliates a man for chuckles on national TV.

Neurosis causes a friction that results when the lies we live keep bumping into the truth. And in modern-day gender relations, there has been enough friction to burn granite. But the rules keep us from talking about it. Well, most of us.

I noticed this on a larger scale in 1973 with Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King. In the infamous “Battle of the Sexes,” tennis match King beat Riggs in three straight sets. It was, as the London Sunday Times called it, “The drop shot and volley heard around the world.”

It was lauded in American media and N.O.W. conventions across the land as proof of equality between the sexes. It was actually proof that almost anyone can outplay someone 26 years their senior. King was 29, Riggs, 55, and he played her competitively anyway.

At no time during all the giddy fervor do I recall anyone pointing out that, while King was an athlete in her physical prime and at the top of her game, Riggs was overweight and eating lunch on the seniors discount. Afraid of saying anything to rock the boat or cause problems for the delusional, the western world erupted with two symbiotic reactions. The women, awash in imagined vindication, collectively chanted “See? See?”

The men, “Yes, dear.”

Personally, I enjoyed watching Riggs get beat. He was an obnoxious hustler. And I would be the last to rob King of all the accolades she righteously deserves for beating a washed-up old man in a tennis game. But I am also sure that boxer Laila Ali, Muhammad Alis’ daughter, could take her father down in his current condition. Perhaps it would make her a hero to modern women. After all, in 1990 Life Magazine named Billy Jean King one of “The 100 Most Important Americans in the 20th Century.”

It appears the grander the lie the bigger the celebration.

All this nonsense ultimately hurts women‘s credibility, of course. When a bad mechanic gets applause for being able to follow the instructions of a good one, just because she is a woman, where does that leave women who really are good mechanics? Why should they bother to excel when any woman smart enough to pick up a wrench and screw things up gets such easy approval and recognition?

But that is how we do it. We give women pats on the back that are, in reality, as sincere as faked orgasms, leaving many of them, like the mechanic on that boat, to to depend on being patronized for any sense of accomplishment at all.

It really makes one wonder how men get the rap for fragile egos when the culture we live in is dependent on routine mendacity to help women feel adequate.

Now, if the ill effects of all this were limited to imagined competence and insincere praise for the less fortunate among us, I would not have much to say about it. Unfortunately though, lies don’t give us the courtesy of staying contained where they do little harm.

They tend to metastasize and spread to more vital areas.

We see this now in fire departments, police forces and of course the military, where physical standards have been lowered so that women, who can do anything men can do, can actually do what men are doing.

Only they can’t, because while the standards have been changed for women, the actual jobs haven’t. So in most cases whatever weight they can’t carry is now redistributed to the men they work with, increasing the workload and danger to everyone.

And the “yes, dears,” once optional, are now a matter of policy. Complaining about women being hired into and kept in positions they aren’t qualified for is a career killer.

It takes me to another personal experience that is oh so germane to the matter at hand. Some years ago, many actually, I worked for the Texas Youth Commission at thier maximum security facility in Giddings, Texas. The “youth” at that facility, 300 of them, were the greatest concentration of sociopathy I have ever witnessed. Most of them were hard core gang bangers, each of them there for at least one murder, often more. The place was a massive holding facility, a waiting room for their 18th birthdays when they were gifted with a trip to state prison, a place they righteously deserved to be.

Those gangsters had some annoying habits, like riots and making weapons to use on each other and those of us that worked there. Much of this activity was well planned, and usually executed when they knew the greatest numbers of female staff members were on duty. They had learned to count on the women to fade into the background when things got rough, as they quite often did.

Complaining about it was taboo. So the men learned to watch out for each other as best they could. Many got hurt in the process. Some badly.

It was the ultimate “yes, dear,” and the cost of it was measured in spilled blood.

It would be nice to live in a world where men and women could be honored and valued for what they can do, regardless of what they can’t do. But that would unfortunately require more honesty than is allowed in the current fairy tale paradigm.

A thousand kudos on isn’t proof of one real accomplishment. And lowering standards isn’t progress, no matter how much we lie about it. But those are the rules, and we will continue to get what we get, which is a lot of hollow hoopla, as long as we lack the courage and good sense to be real.

Paul Elam is the editor of A Voice for Men