GIRLY DRINKS DON’T MAKE YOU A WIMP — BUT CODDLING YOUR MASCULINITY DOES

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Consider this scene from an NYC bar, witnessed just a few days ago:

Man: Hey, I’m getting a drink — you want one?

Woman: Yeah, an energy drink please.

M: An energy drink?????? Ugh… I don’t want to order that, it’s fucking embarrassing!

W: Why? That’s what I want.

M: It’s emasculating.

W: Emasculation is a myth.

M: Then get it yourself.

W: Alrighty then, I will.

M: Can you order my drink, while you’re at it?

Honestly, I thought that people have caught on to the ridiculousness of claiming emasculation. Don’t they get that the concept itself is wrought with internal contradiction? If you’re such a strong, independent, in-control dude, no one has the power to strip you of those things by definition. If holding a non-alcoholic drink in your hand for 30 seconds or coming in contact with something pink renders you completely demoralized, I hate to break it to you, but you are a weak, weak individual.

I cannot fathom being asked a mundane favor (especially after I explicitly offered to be of service) — and then, being like, “Nah, what you want / need is too lame and doing this for you will make me look too uncool to complete strangers surrounding us. So, uh, no.”

What’s happening here is not a degradation of a man’s dignity. A “man’s dignity”, after all, is just human dignity, applicable to everyone, not just men.

What’s happening is taken-for-granted privilege (is there any other kind?). Men have been socialized to feel entitled to say yes or no to others at whim. Having not been taught to doubt himself or invest into a bit of introspection (e.g.: why do I feel threatened by the color pink?), this pseudo-masculine type is not spiritually equipped to confront the roots of his uneasiness. All he knows is that he is uncomfortable and that it is someone else’s fault. Things he does not like or understand are simply “unbecoming” of him.

To bring this back to the opening example: refusing a woman a drink because it’s too “foofy” and then, in the same breath, asking her to get him one. If “hypocrite” is a type of masculinity, then you’ve got it up the wazoo, buddy. Just drop the pretense that women are anything more than a social accessory to you. Here’s the simple formula favored by such “gentlemen”, which, sadly applies to a much wider range of real-life scenarios than just drink-fetching and purse-holding:

  1. Pretends to be courteous by offering to do something for a woman;
  2. When she indicates a choice he does not understand or approve of, feels free to deny her request, judgmentally putting her down along the way;
  3. Thinks nothing of asking the woman to do the exact thing for him that he just refused to do for her;
  4. Gets furious if the woman does not comply.

What you are, dear cis men who use the “emasculation” excuse, are insecure and lazy. You rely on your delusion of grandeur for getting out of cleaning or serving others. You hide behind it to justify being a half-assed parent. You reach for it to cover up your ignorance of the female anatomy and unwillingness to learn to be a giving lover. You punish women for your own feelings of meekness and smallness next to other pseudo-manly-men, fooled by their empty, shallow fronting. The notion that desired masculinity is predicated on “not being like a woman” is a crock of shit you are still joyfully feeding from, while the rest of us have to put up with the stench.

COMMON MYTHS ABOUT THE “GOOD OLD DAYS” YOU HAVE TO BE A LITTLE BABY TO BELIEVE

“Make America Great Again”, eh?

Sure, it is tempting to yearn for the good old days. Most of us do it when we feel dissatisfied with the present or anxious about the future, especially as we age and the grass seems wilted and rotten in the “here and now” and crisp and glossy on the other side of the time-space continuum fence.

It is only human nature to revise and embellish the past to fit our wishful thinking. But there exists a treacherous slippery slope, when people actually start believing those rosy dreams of the wondrously charmed past and let those delusions reflect too negatively on their perception of the present. You hear people “reminiscing” about times before they were even born, convinced that those were the best years — especially compared to the shitshow of modern realities.

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Watching TV reruns and hearing our politicians and media peons proclaim the end of morality, this nebulous “back then” comes off as a simpler and a fairer place. “Back in the day”, everyone was doing great-o: families stayed together, small businesses thrived, lawyers were honest, bankers were generous, the police were friendly and young people were just so gosh darn polite.

“Not like today”, we gripe to ourselves, “Not like this bleak, dickful world I must occupy, a victim of cruel timing!! I belong in an era when everyone knew how to work, how to love, how to live! But certainly not in this cesspool of weak, ignorant, apathetic morons!!!”

Well, my friend, you might want to start drinking or toking to loosen yourself up, cause these loathsome nincompoop contemporaries of yours are actually as good as it gets! And so is the theater of the absurd we call modern life. As hard as it is to believe, the world, in all its supreme crappiness, has never been safer or gentler. Not because the now is great but because the before was even more obnoxious. Let’s walk through the five most frequent laments for the “good old days” heard from your garden-variety crabby citizen — and debunk them for the fairy tales they are.

MYTH #5: TODAY’S WORLD IS SO VIOLENT – WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT TO GET BACK TO THE MORE PEACEFUL TIME IN OUR PAST?

Most of us are horrified by the onslaught of narratives, images and sounds of violence piping out of everywhere. It feels like the world is unraveling with gratuitous brutality and is about to reach a critical mass of FUBAR-ness that will result in “Michael-Bay-and-James-Cameron-had-a-baby” level of planetary wipe-out. In times like this, it is instructive to remember that our species’ rap sheet is actually improving.

It is a relief, of sorts, to know that our century does not hold a monopoly on human cruelty: people have been joyfully offing each other for thousands of years with impressive creativity and gusto. Despite emerging science making mass annihilation more possible than ever, we actually do less physical damage to each other today than in past eras.[1] The modern unprecedented advancement in information technology makes conflict and injustice more visible rather than more prevalent.

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 It is increasingly easy to feel like the walls are caving in and the sky is falling but let’s not overlook the silver lining on the noxious crudplatter that is our modern life.  At the very least, we have reached a level of civilization when we can begin to theoretically conceive of a fair, just, safe society. We have laws for complex notions such as “privacy”;  we have words like “ethics” and “inhumane” at our disposal to use in public debates on topics such as “Is it wrong to torture?”

Those public conversations did not exist before! The civil rights of “bad guys” have not always drawn so much interest and empathy from the general public, you know 🙂 And “the unwashed masses” were not always invited to participate in discussions or decisions of any real importance.

The bottom line is: for most of human history, you really had to be a one-percenter to feel secure from being driven off the land, maraudered, enslaved and violated.  Everyone else was in a tight race for survival, vulnerable to exploitation and oppression. The power elite got to live it up until they were “accidentally” poisoned by their own kin or casually dumped to rot away in a dungeon. And, occasionally, the rabble would throw down a revolution and behead everyone rich and fancy. So, no one was safe, really.

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Clearly, humans are still a very aggressive species, but today, some of our violent nature is seeped by “wars” we wage on the virtual battlefields. Instead of hitting each other with sticks and rocks, people express their anger and fear by furiously typing out profanities on anonymous discussion boards, bullying peers or stalking love interests’ social media accounts. Instead of going outside and picking a fight with a rando, intoxicated tough guys have to option to log on to Facebook and rip into some poor bastard who committed the ultimate treachery of not fact-checking their memes before posting. “I don’t care that you raised me, Grandma, you’re a fucking liberal fascist scum for “liking” O’Bummer’s speech! Gawd, how do these douchebags survive getting out of bed?”

So, perhaps we are just as violent in our minds, but not as much in our deeds. Online trolling is the lazy and / or cowardly person’s bar brawl. As luck would have it, there are many, many lazy cowards out there.

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MYTH #4: BACK IN THE DAY, PEOPLE TREATED EACH OTHER WITH RESPECT

No one will insist that today’s world is a glowing bastion of mutual respect and simple dignity. But to suggest that it was any better in the olden days is to erase all the blood and human tragedy of the hellish struggles for civil rights and basic life necessities denied to the majority of the world’s population by the very few in power.

In the United States, unless you are a white male of the upper class, you have no reason to long for the status quo of yore because all those old-fashioned courtesies the “yore” is so fondly remembered for would not have been available to you. But even if you are a wealthy Caucasian male, wishing for those days reflects quite poorly on your character. Are you suggesting you actually want to go back to the days of legal slavery, overt misogyny, religious morality police, child labor, etc.?

Because that’s a pretty damning thing to admit to wishing for. When you say that people aren’t respectful like they used to be, what you really mean is that you’re not being given “due” reverence as the undisputed master of the planet and every living thing in it, solely on the basis of the imaginary formula: low melanin + Y chromosome = *winning!*. The fact that your entitled ass doesn’t get automatic, unearned respect anymore is a heartening sign that the world is getting better, not worse.

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      Maybe don’t be insufferable?

MYTH #3: KIDS TODAY ARE UNEDUCATED, MANNERLESS, ANTI-SOCIAL IMBECILES

This should be common knowledge, but let’s repeat it anyway, for the older crowd, god bless them: there has never been a single cohort of aging adults that did not consider the young people of their day to be the sure sign of the impending apocalypse! Those arrogant, crusty little blah blah blah blah *trail off* “This was, surely, not at all the case when I was a child – we were all thoughtful, well-behaved youngsters who worshiped and obeyed our parents.”

Of course you were, Dearie. You also always did the right thing and said all your prayers, so it’s shocking that God would punish you with these (check the rant that applies to your generation):

___ arrogant, defiant, oversexed, drugged up, barely literate little shits

___ pathetic, anti-social, vanilla pansy-ass, attention-deficient, barely literate little shits

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The irony of ragging on their own spawn for being doomed, incompetent idiots seems to be wasted on parents who, after all, popped out and raised those funky creatures. And who, pray tell, came up with all that technology that you claim is sapping their brains and social skills? Stop blaming the inventions of the brilliant and/or evil minds of your own contemporaries on your unsuspecting offspring, people!

And while we are at it, let’s back off on holding them responsible for all the ills of the universe. Remember, you once inherited this turd of a world from your own parents! So, it seems hypocritical and mean to gloat to the next generation, like: “Ewww, you’re holding a turd! Way to catch a turd, dumbass!” Like you don’t know where they got the turd. From you. They got the turd from you.

To be perfectly clear, the young people of today are, indeed, arrogant, entitled little shits — but so were you and your parents and their parents and so on and so forth, to the dawn of human existence, so let’s zip it already.

MYTH #2: IN THE PAST, PEOPLE KNEW HOW TO LOVE EACH OTHER MORE

In today’s USA, approximately half of marriages end in divorce. This is a statistic many people find depressing and threateningly reflective of their own dwindling chances at romantic bliss. It’s true, divorce numbers have never been higher but let’s rid ourselves of the false premise that continued marriage equals a wholesome, “good-for-you” marriage.

Comfort, security, routine — marriage is designed to provide those things. At the same time, it is perfectly possible to be married and quite miserable until your dying day — and it becomes highly probable if you only get one chance to get it right. An entrenched sense of settlement, combined with social fears, unwillingness to change oneself and the hesitation to take a risk and “end up alone”: those are the guiding reasons why many people remain in marriages, not love, devotion or happiness.

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Even if people had more technically “durable” marriages in the past than today, it sure as hell was not because they knew the secret to keeping passionate love alive for all eternity any more than us schmucks of today. It was for two decidedly un-warm-and-fuzzy reasons:

1) people needed to stay bonded for life out of socio-economic necessities and / or

2) marriage was compulsory and divorce was either completely illegal or socially stigmatized to the point where it was not a real option.

So, kiddies, instead of bemoaning the death of Love as we know it, be grateful for the unlimited opportunity to find a new lease on life and fulfillment. High divorce rates are actually a sign that the search for true love is quite alive: people are willing to leave their current partner and upset their established routines, identities and social lives — just to give themselves a chance at finding “the right one”, the fools.

Pretty romantic, no?

MYTH #1: WHEN *I* WAS YOUNG, THE WORLD WAS A BETTER PLACE

Who, among us, isn’t guilty of strolling down the ole’ memory lane and yearning for the magic of childhood? This tendency is so strong in humans that we start mourning the passing of our youth, while still in it.

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Go ahead, indulge in nostalgia — just don’t confuse the deeply personal experience of being a child with the historical time period that coincided with it.

Listening to some folks talk, they seem to genuinely believe that “back then”, life was objectively more exciting and full of opportunities, and that food tasted better and the air smelled fresher. Suuuure — and people and objects were much larger and distances were farther apart too  😆

In fact, the world had been aflame all along. It is just that your young brain was, first, too underdeveloped, sheltered and naive and, later, too drunk, high, horny and generally overstimulated to pick up on all the misery and atrocity surrounding you. If obliviousness shielded us from reality, all children and drunks would be immortal.

The truth is, the world of our youth was full of sudden possibilities because WE were full of untapped potential and it still remained to be seen what we would do with all those natural gifts. Then, somehow, you find yourself a grownup — with a hefty baggage of rejections, betrayals and losses and the lingering aftertaste of humble pie on your breath. Whether or not you are doing “well” for yourself, by a certain age you realize that adulthood is not the smooth ride of wish fulfillment you once imagined.

So, of course, it’s nice to long for the “good old days” of boundless energy, trust, the delight of having so much to discover in the world. Underneath it all, we all long to be a clean slate, free from responsibility and unburdened by disappointment — in essence, to be an innocent baby again. Our mouths are grumbling “back in my day” but our brains are sputtering “goo-goo, gaa-gaa”.

Buck up disgruntled Gen-X-ers and jaded Millennials! There’s a “teaching moment” and  a self-bettering opportunity in all this infantile snot-wallowing. Next time you get the urge to miss them “good old days”, ask yourself: how do I feel about my life today? What is so unsatisfactory / disillusioning about my present that I’m willing to invent a fake past to distract myself from it?

The good news is that there is plenty of wonder and magic and “good” left in the world for all of us to tap — it just has to be accessed from the advanced spiritual plane of gratitude and empathy, afforded by experience accumulated through life. The less-good news is that, while aging bears much fruit in the way of anxiety and cynicism, it in no way guarantees maturity or wisdom, so… Good luck with that, let me know how it works out for you — and I’ll do the same…

 

[1] For a detailed history and analysis, check out Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.” (Public Library)

8 SIGNS YOU HAVE WAAAAAY AGED OUT OF COLLEGE PARTIES

There comes a time in life when it hits you with astonishing clarity that you are just “too old for this sh*t”. Here is a handy list of red-flag experiences, sensations and realizations that will let you know, in no uncertain terms, that you are definitely too old to be at this kegger.

One. Upon entering a party, you become painfully aware of every safety violation in the space. Your eye is immediately drawn to shoddy flooring, loose railing, gaping holes and faulty electrical wiring. Instead of enjoying the cool artwork or hip music, you find yourself entertaining thoughts like “Who was the sick psychopath that put this together?” and “I don’t want to die like this”.

At basement concerts, you cannot help but imagine “something” going terribly “wrong” and the inevitable stampede of freaked out agile drunks that will clusterfudge towards the solitary tiny staircase leading up and out. Anxiously eyeing multitudes of candles precariously balanced on stacks of books, you calculate the best and worst case scenario outcomes and realize they are not far apart. Your eyes frantically search the area for the “EXIT” sign, despite knowing all too well the ridiculousness of such an expectation. As you squint around looking for potential escapes, it hits you that your eyesight has gotten really bad and it’s time to make an appointment with an ophthalmologist.

Two. You used to play drinking games to lose, because drinking was the fun part. Now, you play drinking games to win, because drinking is the deadly part. For years, you went on demolishing your health, throwing down like there was no tomorrow. Now that “tomorrow” is here, you are either a frail invalid with zero ability to hold down liquor, or an intolerable alcoholic with a violent streak. Either way, you NEED to win at beer pong, if you don’t want that disgusting stuff hitting your leaky gut and agitating the IBS.

And that’s another thing – with age, your liver has developed a more refined palate and refuses to process Popov vodka anymore. As this rules out approximately 97% of all liquor served at college parties, you are out of luck. And this means no jello shots. And without jello shots, what’s the point?

Three. Your definition of and tolerance for noise have changed — and not in a life-improving way. You see no point in trying to interact in a loud room. You grow increasingly frustrated from being unable to hear a single word the other person is saying. No amount of yelling will cut through the zoological bleatings emitted by what people are referring to as a “band”, “playing”, as people are referring to it, two feet away.

And so, you are forced to nod along with the “conversation” as if you understand what is happening, which you resent having to do. Watching the other person make faces and laugh as if they understand what you are saying reminds you of the pointlessness of life and your own mortality. The next thing you know, existential dread sets in: “Who am I?” “What am I doing here??” “Are they really making a gravity bong out of that fish tank with a live octopus in it???”

You wearily make a note to self that you simply no longer have leisure time, intellectual motivation or life energy to pretend to talk and listen, while having your senses assaulted by the musical stylings of what can only be tone-deaf quadrupedal marsupials honking their noses and flapping their pouches. The whole thing seems like a blood-pressure-raising exercise in futility, so you return to the nervous scanning of the perimeter for signs of fire hazards. There are even more than the last time you checked.

Four. You routinely stop yourself from saying something “inappropriate” because you’re worried about setting a bad example. You and your generation went a bit trigger-happy with all the sex and the drugs and the rock-and-roll – and now that you have a doe-eyed audience hungrily attending to your wisdoms, you realize that what you have to offer may not be so kosher.

Even as you proceed with caution, you can’t shake imagining the parents’ disapproving looks and scornful questioning: “Why are you telling our children about the cocaine trade of Colombia? Is this a responsible thing to do?” *blush* “No, our child does not need to know about the ping-pong shows of Bangkok’s whorehouses, what’s wrong with you?” “But, I brought it up in the context of talking about the Marxian / Engelsian “false consciousness” of the oppressed masses.” “Well, our child definitely does not need to know about that!!”

So you hold back and don’t tell them about that time you had to pay off the Chinese border patrol from busting you and your friends smuggling uranium to the Russians. Because you are a responsible adult and should not encourage espionage in young people.

Five. Women in tiny outfits don’t turn you on or feel like competition – they make you cringe. Upon beholding the flesh parade of coeds in teeny tank tops and tiny mini skirts teetering around on stiletto heels between bars and parties in subzero winter temperatures, you don’t even think to sexually objectify them — you just want to help them survive the night.

Merely looking at them makes you feel cold – and concerned for their health. “Here,” you want to say wrapping each girl in a Snuggie and handing her a hot cup of tea, “you’ll catch your death out here in this weather! And while we’re at it, here’s some comfortable flats for you to walk in – do you have any idea what those heels are doing to your knees and ankles, guuurl?”

Six. Speaking of interrupted sexual objectification… Cruel fate of aging mutes the “sexy goggles” and adds on a layer of “parent / authority figure goggles” prompting you to see college kids as actual KIDS. Before, you looked at young, fine, able-bodied college students partying and were like, “Yeah!! That’s hot!! Bring it ON!” Now you behold those same people socializing and see wee babies sipping on their little juice boxes, rolling and poking around in a sand pit.

You are struck by the realization that, while the problems in your life can be expressed in numbers with dollar signs and unpronounceable pharmacological terms, these little creatures’ immediate worries only run the scale of A+ to F-, and they even left out the E. You don’t want to screw them, you want to grade them.

Seven. You are no longer impressed with or seduced by what passes for “sweet talk” at college parties. Let’s face it, when you were young, the shallowest compliments flattered you and the dumbest revelations blew your mind. But now that you have been alive for a while, fresh, unique or original material is very, very hard to come by anymore.

Simply put, beyond a certain age, you start walking through life knowing that everyone in the room, including yourself, is full of shit. You have heard — and used – all possible lines from the book of universal pick-ups and every epic tale of personal heroism / awesomeness. As the result, now, everyone is transparent and predictable. Oh, you’ve been to Burning Man? And what, pray tell, happened there? You had a spiritual awakening?? No way – really?? And it was –what? – life changing?? NOOOOOOO!!! You don’t say!!

What’s worse, it begins to irritate you that these poor bastards are listening to your lame lines and tired stories with wide-eyed amazement. Are they seriously buying this old-ass folklore you’re spinning at them? You’ve heard yourself vocally torture these narratives and the characters in them too many times – and now, your inner critic won’t quit with the eye-rolls, spoiling all the fun.

Eight. The final nail in the coffin of belonging at a college party is the sharp spiraling of the cultural divide. Out of nowhere, you find yourself in a one-sided linguistic incompatibility loop with everyone around you: they can understand you but you cannot understand them.

There’s nothing like realizing that you are speaking different languages with these people and the difference is, alas, generational. *GASP* References are being made to things you cannot begin to identify, while words you have never heard before – as well as words you thought you knew the meaning of until just now – dominate the conversation, making you work way too hard to follow along.

It is a sensation similar to when you are learning a foreign language and get into a conversation with a native: all your energy goes towards piecing together the few familiar-sounding words you caught – with the general context of the conversation – with hand gestures and facial expressions of the speaker – just to make some kind of sense of it all. Except that not understanding a foreign language makes you feel like an infant, whereas not understanding college slang makes you feel HELLA old.

You heard WHAT on WHAT?

You heard WHAT on WHAT?