I don't really want to dissect the piece itself; for one thing, it contains spoilers. For another, I think Lopez misses the point. And mainly, I'd rather dissect a letter Lopez got in response, because it's even more cringe-inducing, more misogynistic, more whiny than even KLo's screed. Still, in order to set up the letter, I must quote a bit from Lopez, who, may I remind you, is actually paid to edit National Review Online.
Mark Loring reminded me immediately of Leonard Sax. His book, Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men, reiterates some of what Christina Hoff Sommers wrote about in her War Against Boys, and what many of us can see around us: While there are no interest groups worrying about how often they raise their hands or get called on in class, something bad is happening to our boys. Sax — a psychiatrist — writes: “What’s troubling about so many of the boys I see in my practice, or the boys I hear about from parents and teachers, is that they don’t have much passion for any real-world activity.” They’re playing video games that “seldom connect with the real world”; they are like Mark Loring, who sits at home and watches The Wizard of Gore while bemoaning the fact that he’s sold out and no longer plays in a band in bars. (He composes music for commercials to pay for kitchen remodeling while he really wants to be the next Kurt Cobain, as Vanessa complains when he announces he no longer wants to be married.)
Ah, yes. And his wife, the ever-suffering wife, is the only adult in the relationship, while Mark is just a man-child.
We've seen this before, of course, and again and again and again. It's the premise of every Fat Man, Skinny Woman sitcom, the basic drive motor for so much of what passes for pop culture these days. Men just want to have fun, women are humorless killjoys.
This is all the fault of the feminists, as Christina Hoff Sommers will tell you*:
In her War Against Boys, Sommers wrote that “we are turning against boys and forgetting a simple truth: that the energy, competitiveness, and corporal daring of normal, decent males is responsible for much of what is right in the world.” She saw enough cause for alarm back in 2000: Boys were “inhabit[ing] a milieu of disapproval” and living “under a cloud of censure, in a permanent state of culpability. . . . routinely regarded as protosexists, potential harassers, and perpetuators of gender inequity.”I've been very open about blaming myself for the failure of my marriage. This is not to say my ex-wife has no blame, but I take the lion's share, and I deserve it. And unquestionably, a big part of why I deserve the blame is that I was not present in the relationship the way I needed to be. I was not as mature, not as honest, and not a full partner. Was this because I had never been taught to be a man, because I'd been regarded as a "protosexist, potential harasser, and perpetuator of gender inequity?" I have a sneaking suspicion you know my answer to that. But let's wait a second before I start screaming, and instead read from the response to Lopez's brave work, from a man who is himself wonderful but knows guys who aren't.
Feminism’s second wave has had many, many unintended consequences, one of which is that men, not just women have been liberated from their traditional roles. Many men simply don’t feel the need to grow up because women have quite plainly said they don’t need or value men. “You say you can take care of yourselves? Fantastic! I’m gonna go invent computer games and play them for as long as I want.”
So, women indulged in a gigantic fit of self-indulgence and selfishness, which they are still very much involved in, and along comes not just one woman (you), but many of them, calling upon men to engage in the self-sacrifice of yesteryear, while at the same time, retaining all of their newfound privilege, comfort, self-determination, and yes, power, both over themselves (fair) and men (not quite so fair). Don’t like your husband? Divorce him and don’t worry about it. The law will ensure that he still does his 18th century duties; and you’ll still get the kids. Not quite feeling fulfilled enough? Drop your kids at day care without a thought to their welfare and go get it.
….
Now, you will have men, like me and many that I know, who choose to have wives and children and fulfill their obligations to them. You’re not trying to convince such men to grow up; we already have. You’re trying to convince the men who aren’t growing up.
Very, very whiny, this wonderful man who still gets married and has kids. Very childish in his blaming men's problems on the women, instead of, you know, men.
Because that's where my problem lies. With me. My problem is not that my ex-wife was successful and mature, it was that I was not, at least not to the level I could have been. And while I can point to certain things that exacerbated the problem (undiagnosed ADHD, untreated depression), the main fault lay with the fact that I was simply being lazy.
The men who stay at home and play Xbox and don't clean aren't doing so because they have been beaten down by women, they're doing so because they can. Because playing is easier than working, and given the choice, who wouldn't play?
This is not to say that there is not a problem with men -- well, at least some men -- but that problem is not women. No, most women, as KLo and our whiny male chauvinist admit, are doing quite fine. They've managed to actually go to work and manage home life, thank you very much. They're working hard -- anybody working and raising a child is -- but they're getting it done. So why are women able to do it and men aren't?
Because we require it of most girls. We don't -- yet -- of most boys.
Girls are told, from a very early age, that they'll have to manage a house. That if they have kids, they'll be the one to be their primary caregiver. That if they want to work, they'll need to juggle it with life. Women are told, thanks to three generations of proud and strong feminists, that things aren't going to be given to them, that they're going to have to seize them for themselves. Women learn early that the deck is stacked against them -- and it assuredly is, as only an MRA could deny.
Men know we've got it easy. We know society is set up for us. We're told, early, that women are supposed to cook and clean and do the dirty work. And -- bonus -- they also now, in the 21st century, work too, and many of them are damn successful. And men who fully internalize the message that they will be coddled simply fold in on themselves, and let their wives carry them all the way.
How do we cure what's wrong with boys? It's simple. We need to tell them from age two that they need to clean up. We need to buy them toy kitchens and toy vacuum cleaners. We need to tell them when they're young that they'd better not expect anyone to take care of them, that if they have a child, they may very well be its primary caregiver. We need to tell them that yes, the deck is shuffled in their favor -- but less so everyday, and one day, not at all, and that if they want to get anywhere, they're going to have to work.
In short, we need to raise our boys like we raise our girls. At least, that's if we want them to grow up to be as self-actualized as today's women are supposed to be. Though it seems to me there are more than a few women who chose to be the junior partner in marriage, who choose to stay at home and graciously submit to their husbands' authority. I misdoubt KLo and her fan would term these "good wives," rather than simply women damaged by men's self-indulgence and selfishness.
But what about those of us who are already so badly damaged? What of the men like me, who didn't enter marriage ready to be full partners? Well, to put it simply, we need to grow up.
That means, first and foremost, that we need to get some of the "selfishness" that KLo's fan laments. For selfishness cuts both ways, you see. You have to learn that you are responsible for your own happiness and success in life. Not your family, not your friends, not even your spouse -- you are. And to be truly happy, you have to contribute. You have to own some space, to do your part, to be a part of your own life. That doesn't mean you'll contribute equal money in any given relationship; rare is the couple who earns precisely the same paycheck. But it does mean you should contribute the same amount of work for that paycheck, the same amount of work around the house, the same worry about finances and the future, the same help with the children.
You may not be ready to give that much to a relationship. Fine. Then you take it on yourself, and you do it yourself. Get the loft, live on your own, rise or fall on your own, and be as mature as you want to be. If you're on your own, you can't help but mature, by and by. Nobody else will pay your bills for you, nobody else will make dinner or vacuum or take the car to get its oil changed.
Before we can be good partners, we have to be capable of being on our own. "Love one another, but make not a bond of love," as Khalil Gibran once wrote. Before you can be in a partnership, you have to be ready to be a full partner.
And if you aren't, well, things might not work out. That sucks, but we shouldn't wring our hands when things fall apart, or when one partner -- male or female -- isn't ready or right for marriage. I believe, truly believe, that I'm a far more mature person today than I ever would have been had I stayed in my marriage. I believe that I'm healthier emotionally and spiritually than I would have been otherwise. I believe that I'm a better father because of the path I've taken. It isn't the easy path -- that would have had me reach these epiphanies five years ago -- but it's the path I took.
What Lopez and her commenter miss about Bateman's character is that he's a man who was not ready for marriage -- and may never be. That in and of itself is no sin. There are millions of men and women in America who shouldn't get married, at least not this instant. But because we are all taught, men and women alike, that we're supposed to get married, supposed to have kids, supposed to have a family, many still will, right now, for better or, more likely, for worse.
Bateman's character has a lot of growing up to do. It would be better for him if he could do so in his marriage, as a father. But he can't. Maybe he should have been "raised differently," and maybe that would make a difference. Or maybe he'll move into his loft, get into a band, and end up the next Kurt Cobain. Most likely, he'll move away, find a job that suits him better, grow up a little for being on his own, learn to be himself, and who he is, and maybe, someday, he'll get married to someone for the right reasons, at the right time. And maybe not.
Either way, only he can be responsible for himself. And he can only learn that the way he can. That has nothing to do with his wife or Gloria Steinem or feminism in general, and everything to do with him.
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*And the beauty is, it doesn't matter what "this" is. No matter what it is, Sommers will blame it on the feminists.
