You call that sex??!!

 A collective "woooooaaa" from the audience mostly of men.


After the scene, Jaime said: "I don't understand."

Men grew up impacting each other. Maybe stemming from the need to make a dent on the world. We performed manhood by holding our idea of masculinity dear. We end up punching each other, dissing each other. Calling each other fags if we remotely think someone is deviating. "Ohhh, he's dancing, what a faaaaaaag." "He's getting flowers for Beth?? What a faaaaaaag. Next thing you know, he's going to get chocolates and wine."."Wine and dine, like a goody ole swine." We keep each other 'in line' for the patriarchal society we know, by severely calling anyone out who was different. I know, because I was a sensitive person who was incidentally also good at sports. So I squashed the feminine side down and played soccer with all the boys. "Mark the winger! Stop huffing like a pussy or you're getting piled on after practice.""Tauuupoookk!" It became easy, it became normal to simply yell at another guy for sucking at doing manly things, for being un-guy-like.

Being a bro is so fucking easy.

In the army, woa, not even a contest. We were yelled at, derided, chided, tormented for the most insignificant of things. It's a wonder any of us emerged sane and with our egos intact. In a place full of testosterone, nobody wants to be less than. We did push-ups, sit-ups, arm wrestled to keep the masculinity up. There was the corner for the 'wusses' to talk about their feelings, which sergeants they hated most, and their girlfriends they missed. The fact that their girlfriends would dump them 6 months later (army was two years mandatory) did not help their situation nor their case. The rest of us? Well, the smarter and introverted ones stayed to books. The dumb ones took to pushing our limits. And by that I mean how much trouble we could cause. If we became ghosts, how many of the non-guys can we scare before dawn? Boys be boys right?

So when a statement like that comes up, and it's possible that a scene can go many ways, men (or at least I) will hit that sweet spot of "Omg, I suck at sex, I'm un-guy-like. I need to punch something." I'm still unclear whether the "Woaaaaa" is a "You just got burnt", or a "Boy I don't wanna be in your place right now", probably a good mix of both.

It's not 'right' or 'wrong' for men to think that the statement was directed at us. Our upbringing immediately made us think we're at fault. Because, hell, we sucked at fitting into this mad patriarchy. We didn't know how to court girls and our collective guy knowledge told us that we needed to not be pussies and just be cool. Sex-ed was a whole lot of "Just don't do it". Porn told us we were lacking.

"You call that sex?!"

"What a faaaaaaaaag!"

The patriarchy hurts men as well as women. Women more so than men, because they become the target of these sexual harassment and assaults by shitty men. But hey, don't forget, men who are less shitty do hurt. And there are men trying to make sense of all this.

Men need to re-examine the 'bro'.

Published on
2/26/19 8:20 AM

Asking the right questions since 2019

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