Hats off, slide the chair, hold the door. Robert Barsanti reflects on traditional gender roles, and how, in the end, a man does what needs to be done.
This summer, my youngest son and I spent a good bit of time outside of stores. Most of these stores sold lovely things like Legos, chocolate, and comic books about blue hedgehogs. The boy, with the unerring sense of dog on the hunt for cheese chunks, would drop from the car and run for the door. Then, at the door, I would make him stop and look. If someone was there, he would stand to the side and hold the door. Baby carriages crept past. Chatty mothers walked even slower. For the boy, waiting would involve shifting his feed and fidgeting, but he would pause until the ladies had left. Then, he would sprint for the new Millennium Falcon.
I have taught my boys to take their hats off inside. I have taught my boys to hold doors. I have taught my boys to hold off on eating until everyone is at the table and their mother begins. I have taught them to be considerate, courteous, and, perhaps, condescending.
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These days, old school rules of politeness have acquired a razor edge. Courtesy can be the mask for chauvinism and the excuse for privilege. A lady doesn’t need to travel too far down the Emily Post Road to find Don Draper and the boys at Sterling Cooper holding her coat and pinching her bottom.
Nonetheless, the wars over gender and courtesy are best fought by undergraduates in the firm zeal of the dorm hallway. At the PBR Midnight Seminar, chivalry and courtesy are masks for the ugliness of chauvinism. In the world as it should be, such quaint and polite traditions should fade into the same yellowed twilight of calling cards, cigars, and petticoats. No one should feel that they should hold the door or the chair or their tongue just because of sex. The incandescent egalitarian light burns the shadows of doubt away.
And that light burns on, like a lighthouse on a distant shore until you sail over the horizon. Perhaps, you lose sight of it when you propose to marry. Far out to sea, beyond the blinking eye of righteousness, you buy the ring for her. You “inform” her father of what you intend to do. Perhaps you lose sight of that egalitarian flash when she becomes pregnant, or after, when the kids are young, or perhaps, at the last, you are faced with energetic and rapid young men. In the dark of the ocean, you fall back on the patterns and rules of the past. You follow the steps of those went before you.
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Gender roles are those time worn steps. You learn the path from the older man you have known. Some show you the right: many show you the wrong. But, when you are lost, confused, and feel that you are far over your head, that path guides itself. You wait. You walk. You hold the door.
In our modern age, gender doesn’t mean unequal, just different. The workplace may value “social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus” but those attributes are no more female than competition and discipline are male. Character and talent is no more gendered now than it was in the time of Queen Victoria. At the cashier’s window and in the courthouse, men and women should be equal. But when it comes to blood and bone, only the foolish would eliminate the differences.
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Pretty theories melt in the light of a pregnant belly. Doors need to be held. Chairs need to be slid. Care needs to be taken. A husband becomes a father, and is suddenly the third most interesting person in the bedroom. No matter how sensitive and egalitarian, parenthood divides the sexes in a ragged line. Somebody has to patrol the perimeter.
The mother makes a secret garden for her baby. That baby feeds, sleeps, and dreams to the sloshings and scents of the familiar woman. They live within a wall of blood and milk, and Daddy can’t fit inside. I have the baby right now. You go get diapers.
At core, that’s what a good man is. He is the guy who goes and gets the diapers. A good man eases the pain of someone else, whether it be his wife, his child, or his parents. He steps back, looks carefully, and tries to help. He is useful.
No one embodied old school fatherhood they way Hector did. The Greeks were on the horizon; they would rape his wife, sell her into slavery, and toss his son from the walls of Troy. So he goes to war and sacrifices himself. He takes one for the team.
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Charlie Sheen doesn’t. Manny Ramirez, Michael Jordan, and Mike Tyson are in it to win it. They embody the hooey from the evolutionary psychiatrists, fighting to be faster, stronger, and the king of the rockpile. In addition, they fly through the night like genetic tooth fairies, leaving babies under the pillow. Travis Henry, with his eleven children from ten mothers, is the patron saint of the “hit it and quit it” mentality. They’ll change the diaper right after this game of Madden.
The failing of gender is that we teach our boys the wrong lessons. We teach independence and not dependence, we teach strength without restraint, we teach rage without love. We teach bros before hos.
I teach this modern male. He walks into my seventh-period class stoned, and he sits in a huddle with three other boys. He doesn’t have anyone to write to, anything to talk about, and anything to do. He skipped school when the new Gears of War game came out and when I called home, the phone just kept ringing.
If the twenty-first century man is doomed to spend his adulthood twiddling his thumbs on his Mom’s sofa, Darwin and the recession aren’t to blame, their fathers are. A generation of boys who don’t go to college, can’t get good jobs, and can’t pay child support are a generation of jiggalos who never found the time-worn path. Duke Nukem and Mario can’t do the work of one good man. Gender isn’t disappearing, fatherhood is.
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Masculinity isn’t at the Superbowl or in a Dodge Charger. It isn’t the paycheck, and it isn’t the backhand in the kitchen. It isn’t fast, thorough, or sharp as a tack (it doesn’t tour the facility and pick up slack). It isn’t in beer ads, car ads, or somewhere out in Marlboro country. A man gets up at three in the morning, changes the diapers, and heats the bottle. Then he goes to work. He does what needs to be done.
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So, I didn’t golf much this summer. Ponds, high grass, and hedges remained innocent of my wayward golf balls. I didn’t fish, waterski, surf, sail, or conquer Halo. I didn’t work either, although my wallet could have used it.
Instead, I spent the summer in the company of two little boys, while their mother worked at her shop. We were the princes of the apple towns and the king of the tide line. In the afternoon, we went to the Juice Bar for ice cream. And in the Atlantic heat and humidity, within sight of the Watermelon Cream and Chocolate Chocolate Chunk, I made them stand and hold the door. They also serve, who only stand and wait.
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photo by shortfatkid / flickr
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