Jake Weiss
9-30-07
Miss Wendt
Paper 1
After I read the articles, Being a Man, Femininity, The Appeal of the Androgynous Man
and I Want a Wife, I noticed that they all have many ideas in common. These articles all
describe the way certain sexes of people are treated or in fact treat other people. After reading
my paper you will have a good understanding of the ideas these articles are trying to portray.
After carefully reading the articles, Being A Man, Femininity, The Appeal of the Androgynous
Man and I Want a Wife, I saw a resemblance between them as they were all structured around
the way the different sexes are treated and the way they treat each other.
The article Being a Man, by Paul Theroux, describes his views of the definition of the
statement “Being a Man.” Theroux believes that our society’s impression of a man is quote, “is
like wearing an ill-fitting coat for ones entire life.” I agree because men tend to keep themselves
hidden. For example, if a man feels the need to cry he tries to hold it in and be manly about it.
This is what Theroux means that men are scared to be criticized for showing emotion and
feeling. Theroux also states that, “High school basketball teaches you how to be a poor loser, the
manly attitude towards sports seems to be little more than a recipe for creating bad marriages,
social misfits, moral degenerates, sadists, latent rapists and just plain louts.” In this statement, he
expresses his feelings toward high school athletics as he believes them to have some blame for
the way manly men treat others who write books instead of playing football. So as you can see,
Theroux has some good arguments that prove that in order to be considered a man you need to be
an ignorant jock who does not show feelings or emotion for anyone or anything. This is the
reason our world has portrayed this image of what a man is and what young men need to do in
order to become a man.
The article Femininity, by Susan Brownmiller, ties right in with the ideas of the article
Being a Man. The author introduces the audience to her views towards the way women act in
our society today. Susan says, “Femininity is a challenge thrown down to the female sex…” By
this statement she means that being feminine does not come easy for women. Years ago, women
just wore dresses and there was no debate about it, nowadays, a woman who wears jeans and
sweatpants in public is considered to be a more masculine trait in our society. Although this is
considered a masculine trait, this is becoming more popular and prevalent in today’s society.
Susan compares women to a spoon because they are well rounded and compares men to a knife
because they are not as smooth and well mannered. She says, “To be insufficiently feminine is
viewed as a failure in core sexual identity, or as a failure to care sufficiently about oneself, for a
woman found wanting will be appraised as mannish…” This means that if a woman does not act
feminine, dress feminine or look feminine she is unattractive in a man’s eyes. She is
unappealing to men because she does not put forth the effort to look attractive. I agree with this
because women who work manly jobs are not as attractive in today’s society. Men like to have
very feminine women because it raises their self-esteem and it makes them feel more masculine.
From my own experiences I have judged women by what they wore and labeled them as
masculine or even lesbian. It is wrong but is something that goes on everyday. Our society has
led us to believe that women who act and dress masculine are in fact masculine. For example,
there was a girl in my school this year that wore sweatpants everyday and everyone would say
how they thought she was a lesbian. This girl was a very good friend of mine and she was in fact
very feminine but just by the way she dressed people categorized her. This is something that
Susan is trying to express in her article that being feminine is a challenge for women that they
must live up to in order to be thought of as a women.
In the article The Appeal of the Androgynous Man, by Amy Gross, the author informs us
about the way androgynous men are treated in our society. As I read this article, I agreed with
almost all of her opinions that androgynous men are considered feminine men or gay. For
example, the manly man is supposedly thought of as a football player or a hunter. The
androgynous man is thought of as a writer or a pastor or a man that shows his emotions. An
experience of mine with a so called androgynous man was with my pastor. The way he showed
his emotion in church he was labeled as an androgynous man. I am one to say that he used to be
a body builder. People that did not know him would never be able too tell. This just shows how
people can judge a book by its cover. Gross says, “All-men men have absolutely no taste in
food, art, books, movies, theatre, dance, how to live, what are good questions, what is funny, or
anything else I care about.” This means that men who are considered all-men men have no
emotion to anyone and force themselves not to show it. Androgynous men on the other hand
show there emotions even if that means crying. So as you can see, many times we judge others
because they act differently than the all-man man when really no one knows the really definition
of a man and how he should appeal to us.
As you can see, these articles are all structured very similar as they show us ways we
treat different people in ways they should not be treated. There topics are very much a like and
switch rolls from man to woman. This gives us a good outlook on how we act sexes towards
everyone even if we do not know them. We do not treat people who act differently the way they
should be treated and is something that obviously offends people like the authors of the articles,
Being a Man, Femininity, The Appeal of the Androgynous Man and I Want a Wife.