The American Male: Used Up, Deserted, Lost

THE AMERICAN MALE: USED UP, DESERTED, LOST

Make no mistake about it. It is one of the best kept secrets. It concerns the American male. His macho self-image may be an mixture of John Wayne, a football player, and an astronaut and a few good men recruited by the Marine Corps, but it is not shared universally. For decades, European scholars and journalists have published and portrayed a severely contrasting view. The differences between the two images are in fact so glaring that the time is overdue for a divulgence of the secret. The fruits of Europe's evaluations of the American male must finally be made available to the very species which has been the subject of endless research, analysis and observation, if not condemnation.
The scholars of the Old World agree that the character of the American male was shaped generations ago. The Western Frontier was settled in the beginning primarily by men. There were few frontierswomen among the early frontiersmen. Those females who did venture west had the power to choose and to bargain. Consequently, so Europe's scholars believe, rightly or wrongly, a premium was extracted by the American female. She was put on a pedestal, the "benefits" of which still accrue to her to this day. Reformulated, the frontier society resulted in the American male becoming subordinated. His value was reduced in the sexual and matrimonial markets. According to European observers, the 19th century witnessed a gradual emasculation of the American male.
The loss of stature and the transformation into a supplicant, induced primitive fears in the American males. Europe's literary critics easily identified those fear. They pointed, quite frankly, to the theme of the castrated male which characterizes American literature more than the literature of foreign countries. It spans from Melville to Hemingway to Nathanial West to recent novelists. Besides this, it is patently clear to Europe's pundits that this archetypal fear manifests itself also in the degree to which American males, especially athletes, use--even cling to--athletic supporters, a practice not duplicated to the same degree in other societies.
In the 1950s and early '60s, British psychoanalysts in the Freudian tradition concluded that the big bosom craze sweeping the Hollywood of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Mansfield was linked to the American male's fixation on mother's breast. Symptoms of psychological dependence and failure to mature were, in turn, corroborated by the habit of consuming vast quantities of dairy products, especially ice cream. In their efforts to malign the American males, British psychoanalysts conveniently forgot that American females also consumed vast quantities of ice cream.
Meanwhile, a German sociologist, after teaching at Harvard, published a highly complimentary book about America. Despite its laudatory tone, though, the American male again was not treated either kindly or respectfully.
In the family hierarchy, his position of power was placed--apparently in all sincerity--below the family dog with the wife on top and the kids in between.
Other scholars, about the same time, found "deep meaning" in the fact that American sexual jokes seemed to berate the males much more frequently than females. To one witty, if not overpsychologized, scholar the American male betrayed a form of psychic self-immolation which was best exemplified in the habit--widespread among high school students--of referring to the male's private parts as "she." The same wit--or academic half-wit--also found meaning in the unusual high number of girl drill teams which marched, sometimes with fake guns, at sports rallies or paraded endlessly down mainstreets with a determination and soldierly bearing reflective of the powerful position of the American female. Few nations could match such military habits on part of the younger members of the presumably weaker sex. Other scholars looked at economics and discovered that there, too, the female prevailed. She owned the vast majority of AT&T stocks. What more proof does one want?
In any case, no stone was left unturned and nothing remained sacred in the analysis of the poor, manipulated and exploited American male. Some Old World observers even discovered that rest rooms in the U.S. tended to be identified frequently as "Ladies" and "Men" but never as "Gentlemen" and "Women"--a clear case of expressing in an insignificant fashion the relative position of America's males and females.
Others pointed to the number of males who were and still are in the habit of simply turning over their paychecks to their wives and then, after having done so, meekly asking for an allowance. Still others explained the powerful position of the American females by pointing with awe to the vast array of female organizations ranging from the American Association of University Women to the PEO to the League of Women Voters and female Art Clubs which have no male equivalent in the U.S. and which, again, are not duplicated to the same degree in other societies. Beyond that, those all-male clubs such as Rotary and Kiwanis, which were traditional male havens, have been invaded and stormed by females in the last two decades or so.
Some revolt against matriarchalism was inevitable. According to Europe's pundits, it took the form of Playboy magazine which made its first appearance in the mid-'50s. It appealed to the macho image and aimed to restore the male's self-respect. Yes, indeed, it attempted that, the cyncial Euroscholars intoned. But, ironically, instead of restoring the male to a position of supremacy it ended up elevating women to a higher pedestal with innumerable males genuflecting at the pedestal's base or, more specifically, at Playboy's centerfold.
The revolt against being hen-pecked fizzled and backfired. The male species, having all but lost the battle of the sexes, retreated to sports events where its members demanded with vigor that there, at least, the male could demonstrate the full range of his prowess to the point, some would say, of demanding actions to heap injuries upon injuries the description of which replaced batting averages and yards gained as the primary fascination on the sports pages. But, alas, as was the case with all-male club, the male bastions were also stormed by female athletes in the last two decades or so.
But then came the female liberationist movement of the early 1960s. What about its message that the female was the one exploited and oppressed? Ah, so, the echo came haughtily from Europe. The movement originated in the U.S.. It is quintessentially American. Its global leaders, Friedan, Steinem, Abzug, Smeal, and Brownmiller are all Americans. And the movement itself is a testimony to the power of the American female and expressive of a bid for more. In face of this challenge, the American male remained timid, if not impotent. No nationally well-known male organization opposed the movement. The only one that did was headed by a female, Phyllis Schlafly, who, in turn, is largely supported by females. Its members know that true and genuine liberation and equality would actually rob women of their privileged status. Besides, the drama of liberating females had no strong equivalent in other nations. With razor sharp contempt, a serious German weekly, Die Zeit, even characterized the American female liberationist movement as the inevitable logical end-product of the emasculation of the American male.

Before long, the self-assertion of America's females was symbolized in the Bobby Riggs--Billie Jean King tennis battle of the sexes which was televised with much hoopla in 1973. Sensing a quick way to make a buck, the producer tried to sell it in Italy, yet was rebuffed by an Italian who asked a bit disdainfully why an older man--Riggs was 55, King 29--was playing a young woman in the first place.

In any case, the sorrowful image of the American male continues. In conversations and manners toward the opposite sex, he is viewed as awkward and ill at ease, preferring to retreat ever more into male bastions of sports events or all-male clubs, though those male oases are being denied more and more by invading females. The fact that he has acquired a wimpish quality and has become thoroughly hen-pecked, oddly enough, is not at all respected by American women. A Dutch psychiatrist, in a major study on the relations of males and females, concluded that those women who attained superiority over men in the battle of the sexes wind up dissatisfied and disrepectfull to the very males they conquered. (Somewhat modified, this theme was subsequently picked up to a greater or lesser degree by American writers such as George Gilder, Patrick Moynihan and Charles Murray.) Without doubt, many Europeans believe that for this reason the American females go abroad to seek the companionship of "true" men as many Roman papagalli can testify.

Undeniably, the defamation of the American male came to a head in 1983. The German equivalent of Time, Der Spiegel, published a title page article on July 4, America's birthday. It headlined: The American Male, Used Up, Deserted, Lost. In ten devasting pages, the female author, spoke of the "infantilism" of American men, of the "mama syndrome," of the increasing number of "househusbands," of the "soft men" who vote for Reagan hoping to recover the male position, perhaps, oddly enough, by beating the military drums. Denigrating nearly everyone from Alexander Haig and Gary Cooper to Truman Capote and Woody Allen, the article portrayed the American male as floundering and living up to the myth widely held by Europeans that he is mass-produced, lacking individualism, and so hen-pecked that his wife will have him wash the dishes within the first year of marriage.

Surely, the assessment is vastly overdrawn and totally unfair. But the question is how the American male will react once this best kept secret will enter his consciousness. Will he then be able to muster sufficient mental adroitness to do to the European males and females what they have done to him?