On Being a Man

I'm a fairly compulsive reader of Salon.com. Actually, I'm compulsive enough to pay to read it. I liked it better when it was all free, but the writing is good enough (for the most part), and the subjects interesting enough, that I will cough up my $25 bucks a year or whatever it is, so that I can read it. As I've said before, we don't have telephone service so I have to download as much as I can and take it home to read. Not having lived in the States for the past 17 years, I use Salon and a number of the other online magazines and newspapers that I regularly read to try to keep up on what's the cultural trends are in the US.

I've just finished reading an interview with a guy who wrote a book about manliness, The Alphabet of Manliness. This interview is just one of a genre of articles about gender issues – some of the others being about why women can't get dates with good guys, the old anti-feminist screeds in new (and old) clothing, articles about sexual dysfunction, guys wondering about what women want (like this is something new?). So how does this navel-gazing pan out here in the jungle?

Last month my family and I were in Mataram shopping for the usual things that are badly needed in the jungle – dog bones, sleeping bags, shoes, pencils and more mundane things like good batteries, a powerful flashlight, and books. While we were strolling around the bookstore, my wife and I came across a book written by an American and translated into Indonesian which was about how to have an orgasm. My wife idly leafed through it and asked, “is this what American women are worried about?”

Out here, gender roles are fairly traditional – women are mainly responsible for the kids, guys work, or try to find work, women may make some extra money running a small shop or warung, or have a full-time job and the kids are watched after by the grandfolks or a younger sibling, or some other family member. So I go to work and teach everyday, my wife stays home with the kids and takes care of the house and the land and does all the social/political hobnobbing that you do when you live in a small town anywhere in the world. I get home and we talk about the day; I help the kids with homework; water the lawn; do those kinds of traditional dad things. There's nothing very special about all this – we're just a family in a community of families all trying to get along the best as we can, enjoying the little pleasures of life – kids, pets, friends. Topics of conversation center around our kids, village gossip, a little bit of politics, and discussion of day-to-day problems like who has a functioning generator or what are you paying to get the guy from the general store to deliver your groceries. I can't recall a conversation in the past three years with any of the men here that centered around trying to figure out what it means to be a man.

I'd think that with all of the surprises that the Bush administration throws at Americans (and the rest of the world), there'd be a lot to talk about other than whether doing the dishes makes a man a pussy, or asking your wife to make you a sandwich makes you a Neanderthal. So what is going on in America these days?