Now when I say that it’s very difficult to write about certain topics because I’m a white male, it makes it sound like I don’t know how privileged I am… which, of course, is the point. I end up sounding like I’m mansplaining and that’s upsets just about everyone. Lots of men get upset because they don’t like the term and lots of women get upset because I sound like I’m being patronising.
(And for those of you who don’t know the etymology of the word “patronise” it means to talk down to someone like a father would. Interesting that “matronise” isn’t a word as far as spellcheck is concerned because every time I tried to write it, the computer helpfully changed it to “patronise”.)
Ok, having clearly stated my reservations about expressing my opinion on anything owing to the fact that I’m a privileged, white male and we don’t get to express our opinions on anything these days without someone oppressing us by pointing out that we may not actually be correct, I’m going to dip my toe into the water here and explain things in a clear, logical way that’s liable to upset enough people, just like all those Murdoch columnists who make their living by upsetting enough people that just about everyone reads them in order to disagree.
When a Bettina Arndt column first appeared in the 1980s, I read it and thought that it made some sort of sense. It talked about the difficulty of being a man at the time and, well, I was, and it was.
Don’t misunderstand, I don’t mean that it was easy to be a woman. I mean, I wasn’t, so I have no idea, but from what women were telling me, there were a lot of barriers to women doing just about anything and I agreed that nearly all of them were ridiculous and should be removed. In fact, I can’t think of any where I said, “No, that’s very important because if we let women do that, then it’ll just show how incompetent men have been all these years, so let’s make that a male only thing.”
By the 1980s, any male with an ounce of awareness knew that, when it came to relationships, it was no longer the case that the man needed to be in charge and that it was up to the woman to make her man happy. It was a far cry from the words of that 1963 song, “Wives and Lovers”:
“Hey, little girl
Comb your hair, fix your make-up
Soon he will open the door
Don’t think because
There’s a ring on your finger
You needn’t try anymore
For wives should always be lovers too
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you
I’m warning you
Day after day
There are girls at the office
And men will always be men
Don’t send him off with your hair still in curlers
You may not see him again”
But even if males had moved on from the sexism of earlier generations, people still weren’t happy with them and a new acronym SNAG, was applied to any male who was leaving the old stereotype behind. SNAG being Sensitive New Age Guy.
These males weren’t as popular as you might expect and to be called a SNAG wasn’t something that people generally aspired to… unless one was truly a SNAG, which is one of those paradoxes of human existence.
Anyway, the first couple of times I read Bettina, I thought, “Mm, this is it. Here’s a woman who understands that being a man in 80s is no bed of roses,” which immediately made me wonder about the term “bed of roses” which is not something that would be all that comfortable owing to the thorns…
Then she wrote something, and I thought, “This woman has no idea. Yes, it’s a hard being a man, but it’s not easy being a woman and while progress has been made in things like equal pay and we now have female pilots and female jockeys, there’s still a long way to go and… god, I am a SNAG… Damn you, Bettina, you’ve turned me into a figure of fun and I’ll never forgive you…”
Strangely my realisation that I’d developed empathy for the position of women didn’t seem to be noticeable to all the women in my life who tended to be more concerned about the mundane things like whether I’d done the dishes and vacuumed and the fact that I was developing a higher consciousness about the oppression of women seemed to have escaped them. By I guess that’s the thing: When it’s all said and done, women just are more practical than men.
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