Quote:
Originally Posted by Pandora114   :
waits for Acksiom to post his $100k
heheheh |
LOL! Actually, though, other people have been doing fine pointing out the differences, and the importance thereby, in how one can frame this particular aspect.
Conceptually we do in general tend to more assign the active responsible role to men than to women, and as a result discussions like this tend to characterize things more as "Men need to do X" than "Men need X to get done" -- please note the difference there between the active and the passive voices.
And there is an important practical difference to that; "Men need X to get done" is MUCH more likely to motivate women than "Men need to do X".
But, it's different in here, which is one of the reasons I stick around: other people have addressed that difference already, albeit not specifically.
Also, most of what I have to say I already said in coloradoalice's thread "Why"??? --
http://www.mothering.com/discussions...d.php?t=529619 .
Not to mention I'm howlingly busy right now.
I will add one other point though: this whole thing about men investing huge amounts of ego and pride in their penis is just another sociological urban legend, like that whole "fear of committment" nonsense.
sidebar: the vast majority of men don't fear committment; what they fear is
failure, as in
I desperately fear failing to provide for my wife and children. Men are taught almost from birth that they are far more human doings than human beings, and this lesson is reinforced in them throughout life by their consistent observation of how their female peers are not only less severely punished for being bad, but their fellow males and they themselves are more severely punished just for
failing to be
good enough, as well.
Anyways. Most men by far invest far more ego and pride in their sports equipment or cars or homes or even their muscles and general physical conditioning than they do in their penises. I mean, think about it. Do we buy handcrafted sheepskin protective covers to put on our penises (no, condoms do
not count), or polish them with wax (no,
lube doesn't count either), or invest thousands of dollars and hours of labor building additions onto them (stop snickering, you in the back there; very few men actually get penile extension surgery, and are almost always far more figures of pity than amusement). I very much doubt even bodybuilders spend anywhere near as much time and effort, proportionately speaking, on kegel exercises.
Yes, all right, we can interpret just about anything in life sexually, but let's be serious for a moment here: do the men you know
really spend that much time and focus on their penises -- in comparison to their hobbys and other interests?
Come on, you know that they don't. It doesn't even
begin to
approach coming close.
We guys don't like to admit to problems with our penises because we don't much like to admit to
any physical incapacities
at all; we don't like that in turn because it raises in the backs of our minds the awful spectre of
failure, which we are taught to fear from infancy onwards.
It's the same thing that is behind our common reluctance to go to the doctor and to take care of our health overall; we're
terrified, even if aconsciously, of even just
considering the
possibility that we
might be incapacitated, because all our lives we're taught that love and affection and support and even just the mere acknowledgment of our existence is hugely dependent upon our ability to perform and succeed.
Men go to where the love comes from, and they follow it wherever it leads.
Even when that means over a cliff, like lemmings.
Case in point: I didn't really have the time to write all this, but Pandora singled me out by name and with anticipatory praise, and I, like one of Pavlov's dogs, got right up and trotted towards the siren stimulus of
Performance = Reward! Performance = Reward!
until men are able to swallow their pride when presented with the facts, then circing will never be considered a men's issue.
