Whence the Y chromosome?
"In affluent, industrialized nations, the birth of males has dropped every year for the past 30 years. Genital defects, learning disabilities, autism, ADD and a variety of other afflictions have all skyrocketed in males while remaining comparatively low in females. ... The average Gen Y bro has a sperm count that is 50 percent lower than his father's and, of the few spermazoids he does have, 85 percent of them are genetically damaged. According to Dr. Fernando Marina, fertility expert at Barcelona's CEFER Reproduction Institute, if this trend continues, all men will be infertile within 60 years. On a genetic level, the male gender is crumbling, which almost seems natural when one considers the fragmented state of modern masculinity."- Douglas Haddow, "Pornocalypse Now,"Adbusters - Journal of the Mental Environment. Vol. 17, No. 3, #83. May/June 2009.
I'm not even going to roll out the tasteless jokes and jabs that come to mind upon reading this. They're so tasteless they're not even jokes, just continuations of an anti-male sentiment that no doubt contributes to the fragmentation, and to me this is no laughing matter. The lack of a coherent cultural masculinity is something that's troubled me even before I could recognize that's what it was. I wondered why the intelligent, attractive, sensitive men I fell in love with had such low self-confidence and lack of direction. It was easy to ascribe some of the same characteristics in myself to cultural conditioning (to a certain degree; there are of course always many factors), but as the article above goes on to later point out, the women's movement has made a concerted effort to figure out what femininity means. No such concerted effort has been made by men to define masculinity. Culturally, most of them don't even realize they're imaginary gods in an unreal world of pornographic destruction and sex. They go on chugging their Mt. Dew and playing war games, watching other men dominate plastic women while their own virility wastes away through apathy and reality marches on without them. They become dead-ends, both socially and genetically.
I'm not angry, I'm upset. I'm worried. These are my potential mates. I'm lucky enough to know men who are more interesting than 24-hour gamers, but that doesn't spare them the effects of a fabricated sense of masculinity that does not function in the real world. The easily-codified masculinity of the past, where those who went to war and brought home the bacon were 'real men', may not have been ideal, but at least it was recognizable and applicable to the real world. These days you can't just pick out the bad guy and kill him to win. Social interaction has become more complex on all levels. Women have been striving to find equal footing, but in that quest it seems that somehow the men were overbalanced and have lost their own standing. I'm not arguing that are culture is not still male-dominated in many ways, but I would suggest that that domination is one of habit and adhered to with a kind of desperation as men cling to what broken cultural definitions they still have out of a sense of self-preservation and fear. It's undirected.
How to fix this? Heh. I always feel stymied by this sort of question because in the end the only way to solve this, and many other problems in our society, is through cultural revolution in which mutual love and respect are the foundations of our interactions. It's a tall order and not one I ever expect to see filled. The best I can do is to try to treat those I interact with on this basis. I encourage you all, men especially and women too, to consider these things honestly. Open a dialogue. Maybe I'm wrong, and men have this all figured out, but I'm willing to bet it never consciously crossed many minds. Yes, I think a lot about things that are hard to think about. Yes, I spend a lot of time considering who I am and who I wish to be. The unexamined life really isn't worth living. Maybe that's why the little wigglies are dying off.