Part Five:

The New Man. What’s Up with That?

YJ: My wife is in her last quarter of school and we were just realizing that she actually hasn’t had a job in five years, which gets back to sex role expectations that you naturally fall into. We both quit out jobs almost five years ago and moved to Mexico and just lived in Mexico for about half a year and ended up in Denver where we bought a house. And I started selling real estate and she started fixing up the house. So when we got there it was like "Well, we’ve got to make some money, I’ll go sell real estate." So I just did that.

CS: And you did well?

YJ: Yeah, yeah. It worked out on my end. But I had to change my whole image, I bought a bunch of nice suits and ties and got a flat-top.

CS: I cannot fathom. You’ve got to have pictures.

YJ: Oh, yeah, I’ve got a bunch of pictures. I mean, for me I’ve seen myself as a provider somewhere in the back of my head and that I will make any alterations to my image or livelihood that are necessary to make that happen.

CS: That is STILL quintessentially male.

YJ: Yeah.

ML: Uh-huh.

LS: Exactly.

CS: When push comes to shove.

YJ: And then we came back here and again we were thinking about starting up a business at that time and we almost did, but, again, I went out and found a job, so, I decided, "Well, why don’t YOU go back to school, Sienna" and I’ll go back afterwards. But again, it comes down to because I’m a man and I have these certain experiences and I can get a better job, and, I don’t know, it was easier for me as a male to get a better job.

CS: It’s still true.

YJ: So society also nudges you in those sex-role expectations. Now she’s in a really weird position where she’s probably going to go and find a job and realize that five years without a job is really, really strange.

CS: Because we still presume or expect that even thought the roles and the totality of the roles diminish, men still provide even if it’s just a hair more then the male. My wife makes more than I do, but still, I think that expectation is still there: That men still earn more than women. And that until that expectation shifts, IF that expectation shifts, it will still be that men will--BECAUSE society still wants men to still provide, they’ll pay men more than they pay women, and it will piss women off forever until they quit thinking that men have to be, not the sole provider but the provider role.

YJ: But, men have to also abdicate that feeling. One of the things that I’ve been trying to say is that it’s internalized in me where I’m a willing participant in this whole thing.

CS: And in this day and age it takes two.

ML: Which I believe that in this day and age is particularly patronizing and also condescending to females as a whole for inherent and also obvious reasons. I think it’s fascinating that you bring up the whole concept of abdication because I would say one of the most strongest and powerful women I’ve ever met, Treva, whose last name is King. She used to work with Cason’s wife and when I met her I thought "Wow, this is one of the strongest and most powerful women I’ve ever met,"

And the reason why she was working in the same place as Julia was, I believe, for different reasons. It was basically a dead end job that she had and countless times I tried getting out of her what she wanted to do and I was always hypersensitive to the fact that she didn’t really know how to apply her strengths or her power even though she was oozing with it and I was completely frustrated and I think that in the day and age that we live right now females have the chance, they have the opportunity to be a lot more than their mothers were. A lot has happened in the span of just that one generation alone, however they really haven’t got any sort of a mother figure to draw any strategies from. Or, at least most of them, not all. They want to do, they can do, however they haven’t really got a clue about how to actually go about it. And so they’re spinning their wheels.

CS: Because the expectations are still there. Not necessarily the rigidity of what a woman’s role is in the universe, but the functions that are preferable for a woman to take other than the functions that are preferable for a man to take. And it’s possible for either to take either role. It’s possible for a man to be a househusband and it’s possible for a woman to be the sole provider. But, that given one’s druthers that the expectations still--in the undercurrent of all the desiring to be ultrasensitive and the desiring to be acquiescing, in the sense of allowing the possibility of whatever it is you want to do, that still, the undercurrent is expected that the man will be the provider. Even in it’s faintest sense, it’s still there. That it’s expected that the woman will be the nurturer in whatever sense is there.

So, men are battling this and women are battling the conflicting reports between societal or feminist or their parents or whoever it is, the conflicting desires of the expectation of career or advancement in a certain domain or in some sort of function other than traditional female functions. And then the concurrent and mutual exclusive desire of being a mother and what it means to be a female nurturer/care provider that comes directly in conflict with the expectation of career.

I know that Julia fights with this on a daily basis. She is the last of eight children. She is definitely one of the brightest of her family. It was expected that Julia--she took AP classes, she took everything, a very intelligent woman--it was expected that she go on into some professional field in order to capitalize on her intellectual assets. It was expected that she go on and be the strong career person. She HATES working in an office. She absolutely loathes it. She loves working with people. What Julia wants more than anything is to be a stay-at-home mom and the conflict within Julia is what she really wants is to be a stay-at-home mom, but what others will look upon her, she feels, is that here is this very bright woman, very capable woman of tremendous means to do anything she wants and yet she somehow prefers to be this sort of disdainful stay-at-home mom.

LS: So that the societal pressures of women have redefined her role such that she feels embarrassed for the achievement that she wants to achieve.

CS: Precisely.

LS: Society has said that that is a secondary achievement, perhaps even a tertiary goal.

CS: Because that role is perceived as a function of male domination. It’s perceived as a function of "This is the role that you have been given. Therefore, what you have to do is break out of that role because you are possible to break out of that role."

LS: Let me ask a real dirty, nitty gritty kind of question: So, are we letting women determine what our roles are and what their roles are? I mean, I’m hearing you say that women, other women are determining what Julia’s role is, and if she feels uncomfortable because other women say "That’s an unacceptable role--"

CS: --they’re certainly determining what the conflict is.

LS: We have women telling us "You’re not sensitive enough, or your time is not divided properly or those kinds of things are going on because you’re not a good man, if a man at all, because you don’t have the feminine qualities that we desire you to have." Julia’s obviously been told by other women--

CS: But I think that that is the source of the conflict, not necessarily the source of her actions. I think what’s possible is that we’ve been forced in some ways to become aware and therefore feel somewhat shameful of the manner with which we’ve interacted. And what’s happened is that we’ve kind of let it be that we’ve come to the point where we say, "Okay, I am unaware, I am an idiot male, I am unaware of the manner with which I interact with other people, other males, other women, therefore what I do is wrong, whatever you say is simply a matter of your intuitive perception as a woman and I just don’t get it. SO, I’m wrong no matter what it is. It’s like what Tim Allen said about, no matter what you do when you get up in the morning, roll over to your wife and say "I’m sorry" and she’ll know what you mean.

But by simply being unable to redefine what it is to be a man in some sort of way that is mutually desirable or innovative we’ve lost the ability to define or in other ways intuit who we are. We’ve simply abdicated that to what a woman says we are or are not. And it is simply in the desire to become sensitive to the manner with which we’re relating in a way that we’ve been insensitive before. Saying "I don’t really know how to be with you anymore because I’ve realized that men have generally been dickheads in the past. I get it. Okay, cool. But I don’t know how to be with you anymore so I’m going to let you define, perhaps, how it is that I should be.

YJ: In light of what you’re saying about Julia, it makes me feel that women are in the same sort of position--

CS: Precisely.

YJ: There’s this absolutely fabulous psychologist, Helen Luke, who combines intellect with wisdom of years, she’s, like, 90 years old--

ML: --and she’s still cutting-edge--

YJ: --and she says that there’s this force in society which seems to be trying to force everybody into what she calls this horrible sameness, that actually, in her opinion, everyone on the other hand is rebelling against this horrible sameness. What she says is equality of value between sexes is an eternal truth and that other kinds of equality aren’t really as important if you focus on equality of value, that’s the eternal truth that we’re looking at. And problems come in when we’re looking at--there’s people now who, when the child is born the woman doesn’t breast-feed because that would be unfair to the male, right?

CS: Excuse me?

LS: Well, that’s new.

ML: If I could, I would.

YJ: I knew some people in Denver, the woman would pump her milk so they could each feed her milk from a bottle equally. I mean, that’s absurd. I’m sorry. But I’m happy to admit that when I watch Sienna breastfeed Marcel I felt a sense of envy at some level. But once I started feeding Marcel with a bottle when he was much older it still didn’t give me that sense of intimacy that I could see that Marcel and Sienna had had by actual breastfeeding which you can just never have. And it’s absurd to try. I feel this really strongly with Sienna that she really wants me to be a man.

CS: What do you mean that she wants you to be a man? What does that mean to her, what does that mean to you?

YJ: I agree that it’s pretty indefinable, but we are real equals and I think that anyone that knows us as friends would agree that we’re very much equal.

CS: And yet, putting in the lightbulbs in the car is such a "guy thing."

LS: Chinese men have no problem whatsoever in terms of female/male. I’ve been to China several times. Chinese men have a clear understanding that it is a challenge between men and women and if men are not in control than--men understand that it is to their advantage to control commerce, to control business, to control structure...

ML: The outside world.

LS: Yeah, and it is to their advantage to subjugate women. They have no problem with that.

CS: Sure, they’re fifty years behind essentially.

LS: Or they’re 3,000 years ahead, whichever way you want to look at it.

ML: It’s really interesting that you should say this because I heard years ago that it is not uncommon in China to see old men holding hands as they walk down the street.

CS: That’s true in Bali.

LS: In China as well, when women hold hands it is nothing sexual. Nor is it any connotation of sex. It is an expression of friendship, but friendship no more than the level of what we are experiencing tonight.

ML: Human bonding in a non-sexual way.

LS: However they have a real fear of touching your skin. When I was there I came out feeling like a rock star. People are standing in line six deep to see you as you walk up to the invisible border and you say "How are you?" and most are learning to speak English and I said "What a beautiful baby" and touched the baby and they then immediately reach out to touch your skin. They want to know the feel because they have no body hair. That really, really looks different. "What is this?" And old men walking and holding hands is no different. It’s like Cason and I walking shoulder to shoulder with my arm around him and his arm around me. Ours is much more a close bond.

YJ: When we were talking about this extreme form of patriarchal society--

LS: Oh, yeah, they’re hard-core!

YJ: When Sienna and I were in Mexico what used to really intrigue me is it’s almost because of this macho culture is that there were areas where men seemed very free to be feminine in a way. Like I felt that overall Mexican men were much more loving with their babies and children. Carrying them all the time, being really, really affectionate with their children moreso than I felt here in the States.

LS: I did that with my kids all the time.

CS: How did they relate to the women, though?

YJ: In the stereotypical, macho kind of way.

LS: But, how do you feel with carrying Marcel?

YJ: Well, I mean, I’m really cool with it, but...

CS: DO you think that’s typical?

YJ: No, I think I’m kind of atypical.

LS: My Dad would not be close. I finally told my Dad, I said "Look, I love you very much and I want you to understand that I’m going to kiss you. When you come to visit, don’t be surprised, don’t be upset, don’t be embarrassed, don’t feel anything other than the fact that I love you, but I’m going to kiss you hello, I’m going to hug you hello." And it went from hug to kissing to a kiss on the lips. For Cason and I, it’s never been anything other than kissing on the lips, because I wanted it that way and he felt comfortable doing that.

YJ: Yeah, I do that with Marcel all the time.

LS: Now, I have another son who has now begun to warm up. The only way to say hello to him, the most expressive way you can say hello to him would be a hug. A brief hug. The other son is a warm hug, a kiss on the cheeks, he’ll kiss you on the cheeks, you kiss him back, "Hey, how ya doin’?" The stepson, exactly the same way, hug, kiss. The daughter? Perhaps a very brief embrace. That’s what they’re comfortable with. With me, it’s familia. No problem at all.

YJ: For me, one of the favorite moments with my father practically is when I first get to their house and when we leave because the habit of the Swiss-French is that you kiss three times on the cheeks, and that’s always a warm moment with my father and I really appreciate that, that we have some physical contact at that time. It’s like that’s when we’re closest physically and at other times we may be closer intellectually talking about some subject.

LS: But do you ever feel warmer than that?

YJ: No.

LS: No, I don’t either.

ML: My father and I have always kissed each other on the lips for as far back as I can remember and I remember when I was in grade school somehow it got around that I kissed my father on the lips when we’d say good night and I remember being taunted about it, and I recall thinking "Why is this wrong? Why is this not a cool thing to do?"

FIN