In this blogpost, I tackle the biggest myth of all: the myth of freedom, and expose the reality of shackles that we live in.
The delusion of “Freedom”
Sometimes I feel like I might have an underlying Tourette syndrome-type problem. Especially when I’m bored stiff in a meeting or group interaction, I toy with the idea of saying something crazy, to shake people up, see how they would react. But so far at least, I haven’t said it.
The point is we are all in shackles. There is no free speech. There’s not even fully free thought. No one has full freedom. When I think of the word “freedom”, I think of America. A century of slogans of liberty, life, pursuit of happiness has brainwashed everyone. And the opposite of freedom makes me think of countries where you can’t wear whatever, do whatever. But the reality is no one is really free, not even the people you think are free are free.
Wait, why are you writing about freedom? Don’t you blog about dating?
What inspired this post was a glass of wine, and a copy of Men’s health which was left in my hotel room at the W (I guess they thought I was a guy?). Also, I haven’t been on a date in six months (wah wah) so can’t really write about dating any more.
The shackles of men
I wonder what men read I thought as I enthusiastically started to flick through Men’s health…
Most boring magazine ever.
This particular one didn’t even have an article on sex. The articles were mostly about exercise, and full of serious, slightly angry looking men. The color scheme was strictly masculine (read: strictly boring) and the fonts very straight-edged, harsh.
This is masculine culture as the world has defined it: harsh, straight-edged, lacking warmth, tenderness, joy, appreciation, gratitude, depth, complexity, bitter-sweetness, emotion, indecision and all the other things that make humans 3-dimensional. Men are flat in this world. They’re just meant to wear suits and expensive watches and go to ‘business meetings’ or go shirtless with six packs, and have a few girls around them, who they sleep with but don’t have particular attachment to. That’s marketing’s view of masculinity.
I find it preposterous that for the longest time men weren’t meant to use certain products. Take moisturizers as an example, as if only women needed moisturizer. Or to groom their eyebrows, as if only women need to interfere with nature. And if you look at cosmetic products today for men, it’s just ridiculous how blue and grey they are and how much effort companies have to go to to make them look boring and ‘manly’ enough to be accepted, and how they always have to be labelled as ‘For men’. Have you ever seen a cosmetic product labelled ‘For women’?
My perusal of Men’s health got me thinking about the other ways in which men are shackled. Some of these are counter-intuitive and I deep-dive into the ones I feel most worthy of editorial exploration:
- They can’t like anything that’s not black or blue or grey
- They must have masculine hobbies like watching sports, doing sports. Straight men can’t say they like doing embroidery or going to art galleries
- They can’t cry during movies
- They need to be stronger than women even when they’re sick/tired
- They can’t say ‘no’ to sex even when they don’t want it
- They can’t seem to want sex too much
- They have to pretend that monogamy is normal and that they only want to sleep with their wives/girlfriends
- They can’t text more than one line at a time, or use punctuation (Ok, I’m not sure why this is, but men consistently are sparse and lack attention to detail in written communication versus women in my experience)
Let’s talk more about the meatiest shackles….
Shackle: Men must have masculine hobbies like watching sports, doing sports. They can’t say they like doing embroidery or going to art galleries
Or doing anything that a girl like me who likes poetry and art might actually be able to relate to!
I have many female friends who I can have endlessly long conversations with that traverse many topics, because many of my female friends share the same interests as me: photography, nature, art, poetry, reading, movies, travelling, observing and philosophizing on social phenomena.
And conversations with men? Honestly, I struggle sometimes. The men that are good conversationalists usually are those that have a broad range of interests, and these men are rare. I’ve come across a higher proportion of guys than girls who have just one or two hobbies that I find unrelatable (like playing pool, or watching football). It makes me wonder: is it that they were raised that way? Is it that they weren’t encouraged to love whatever caught their interest freely, because certain activities are considered more ‘female’ than others. May be it’s not that they were explicitly told that they couldn’t pursue art, but that our society is still pretty gender-segregated from birth to death and so you tend to do what your social group likes doing.
Are many men who pursue stereo-typically masculine interests truly free?
A friend pointed out, however, that in many ways men to get to still have the best of most fields. For example, even if it is relatively less common to come across men who are into art versus women, many of the world’s most renowned artists are men. Similarly with chefs.
Shackle: Men can’t seem to want sex too much
This is a fairly recent phenomenon that I have observed in future-forward cities like San Francisco. Because it’s so widely known that men want sex, many men have taken upon themselves a new shackle of pretending they don’t want sex that much. It has actually made some aspects of dating even more frustrating for girls.
“It’s been date 5 and he hasn’t even kissed me yet, I just feel like he doesn’t want me” – Anonymous girlfriend
I did go on a Tinder date many months back in San Francisco, and was enthusiastically expecting light-hearted banter and flirting, and was disappointed when the guy outstretched his hand and said ‘Nice to meet you’ upon arrival as if it was a business meeting and then proceeded to ask lots of fact-based questions about my life as if he was actually interested in me as a person. Ughh dude, this isn’t Co-founders lab, it’s Tinder. Also, if you’re an Indian girl, 99.9% of people just automatically assume you are boring and a prude. 0.01% have the imagination to treat you like an individual.
Shackle: Men have to pretend that monogamy is normal and that they only want to sleep with their wives/girlfriends
“When men cheat, it’s not necessarily because they don’t love the woman. Sometimes, it’s just the thrill of it. When women cheat, it’s because they’re unhappy with the man, because they’re not getting what they need” – wise SF guy friend
The more I’ve seen, experienced and talked to men, and read about these mystical creatures, the more I’ve come to believe that monogamy is not their nature, but a constraint forced on them by society. They can love someone and sleep with someone else, in a way that a higher proportion of women would struggle with.
The shackle of monogamy is a tough one to enforce on many men as it runs so very counter to their instinctive nature. So it takes a lot of cultural reinforcement to keep it in place. We see this in the media and in our society all the time with the glorification of people who make positive statements about their marriage. I’m not necessarily saying it’s a bad thing, I’m just observing with curious ambivalence at this point.
When we had business speeches at Oxford by CxOs, some CxOs would randomly bring in that marrying their wife was the best decision they ever made, and this statement would be met by approval from the audience. Was it really Mr CEO? Is that why you barely spend any time with your token wife?
“Thursday is date night with my wife” say some, which is met by approving nods from everyone around the table. Even though you know they are bored as hell on date night listening to the same drab conversation, but they have to make it look fun and fulfilling to the outside world, and they have to contribute to maintaining the group norm that monogamy is a desirable state, and that one person can be the most fascinating person in your life for 60-70 years straight.
Concluding thoughts
The interesting aspect of shackles is that they work in several opposing directions. Some shackles bring men and women closer together by pretending that and making us behave as if we are more similar than we actually are. Some shackles bring us further apart by pretending that we are so different and want such different things when we don’t actually. What I hope for is a world with more freedom where people can gravitate to what truly interests them without as much worry about what is ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’. And selfishly, for men to become more interesting. Please.
Disclaimer/Note: What I write is based on my perspectives, and is highly generalized. It’s also written from a heterosexual perspective. I do not intend to cause offence, nor to assert my views as ‘correct’, but intend to bring up topics to inspire interesting thought and conversations among my readers.