Most guys shudder at the thought of being stuck in a room with somebody going off at lengths about Marxist power hierarchies and the oppressed role of women in a paternalistic system which serves to only improve the lives of those damned men who made the world the shitty place it is in the first place.

Frankly, so do I. Between my two degrees (Bachelors of Arts in "Wank" and "Pretense"), I've had enough polite dinner conversations interrupted by such people to understand why most people with a Y chromosome think of feminists only as butch dykes and smarmy assholes on public radio.

Well, I'm here to tell you that it's possible to eat red meat, drink beer, smoke pot, love titties and still be a feminist. I'd also argue an understanding of modern feminism is really important to actually getting along with girls if only because it helps you appreciate their perspective and world they grew up in.

Anyone still with me? No? Well, realize this: you know that scene in the movies, where the really-backwards-but-lovable guy gets repeatedly blown off by a really intelligent female because he's an unrepentant troglodyte but his persistence eventually wins her heart? I think it was probably an Adam Sandler flick, but at any rate, realize one thing: THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE. Guys who don't have an inkling about feminism generally also don't have a clue why oh-so-many girls see them as a total douchebag not worth their time. It often acts as a litmus test of sorts.

Here is how to reconcile feminist belief with modernist paternalistic male paradigms.

First off, we have to assume at least a little bit of guilt for the state the world's in. I am highly skeptical a woman president would have created the current U.S. conflict in Iraq and I am quite sure cannabis would be legal were women in charge (note, however, that this isn't an endorsement of Hilary Clinton; Obama is straight-up king). I'm quite sure women would take significantly better care of the poor and neglected were they in charge; there's a reason why Hilary's plans for health-care resonated so strongly with mothers.

There're a couple things implicit in this admittance. The first is that women can be as good leaders as men if not better in some situations. The second is an implicit acceptance of gender roles as a social construct, but a useful one. The third is that a purely paternalistic (Ahhhh! There's that word again!) approach to handling situations is not always the best. It's worth analyzing each of these because these assumptions direct the whole of this philosophy.

Let's start with the second assumption because it feeds into the others. Within social research, there's been a distinct separation of gender from sex. Your sex is the equipment you're born with; your gender is the set of societal norms you adopt. Drag bars make a lot more sense when you consider that things like washrooms are nothing more than social constructs (IE, things society has both consciously and unconsciously given attributes to; in this case, male or female.). Because transvestites (usually) don't identify with the gender role their sex bestows upon them, they adopt another one. Furthermore, surgery has effectively eliminated the concept of biological gender except from a reproductive standpoint, and even that is being undermined.

Don't get all antsy and call your congressman/woman demanding they do more to stop those dastardly feminists in their tracks; this is actually a good thing for everybody. The GLBT culture is here to stay and nothing the conservatives of the world can do will change that. The undermining of both gender roles is actually liberating, not confining, if only in that it allows people to act more like how they'd want and less like how society expects them to. In a culture that values individualism, this is nothing but positive.

Consider the Marlboro Man. People will usually either give him or Tom Cruise (circa Top Gun, anyway) as the ultimate figures of manliness. Or Chuck Norris, whose exclusion from such a list usually results in a swift-and-deserved roundhouse kicking. These are individual characters, yet they are set as stereotypes for men to follow, or perhaps men adopt them as role-models due to either passive or non-existent father figures to counterbalance the influence of their mothers. But, ya see, the thing is, these are all just advertising constructs designed to make you buy more products, whether it be cigarettes or movies. Society elevates these individual characters as epitomes of a certain paradigm (often more Heroic-era than Enlightenment, unfortunately) and expects similar people (IE, men) to adopt certain shared characteristics, all the while without considering whether these characteristics are worth adopting in the first place.

So men don't cry. And men eat red meat. And men smoke enormously toxic cigarettes, just for the sake of looking "manly". Meanwhile, we expect women to do the total opposite so they conform to their particular gender roles.

Can you see how this is frustrating for both sides? We're all expected to live up to certain expectations and we really haven't a clue why. We're told that in our ancient past, the men would go out and bring home food for the women, who would take care of the kids. Women are weak. Men are strong. The implication is that it's all biological and consequently that's why gender roles exist. However, biological gender roles are inadequate in a culture where people can change their gender in many capacities. Furthermore, we live in a culture where a large number of women could kick my scrawny white paternalistic ass—it doesn't make sense to say I am biologically predisposed to be a better leader when in any sort of post-apocalyptic world situation, it would likely be me staying back at the cave to try and make shit work while my girlfriend goes and brings back some squirrels to eat. Furthermore, in our modern international system, physical strength is in no way related to leadership quality, so the argument is moot anyway.

Now, about that business of gender roles being a useful thing, which I just seemed to contradict. These are useful when we realize that each gender approaches problems differently, and one approach isn't necessarily better or worse than the other. Men tend to be more individualistic, women tend to be more collective, or so at least the stereotype goes. Perhaps our society just undervalues collectivism if only because collectivism is just another name for communism, which, as we know from the Cold War, is the devil. At any rate, it's really hard to argue that a government equally divided between the needs of the individual and needs of the society is a bad one. Perhaps it's time we look at a zippered-ballot initiative—where half the candidates are required to be female, such as they have in Israel—not because of any need for equality but if only to provide a variety of perspectives.

Hotbox Magazine isn't a chick magazine, it's not a dude magazine, it's a cannabis magazine for people who appreciate the beauty of the female form. Of course it's meant to titillate, but titillate with the realization that sex is beautiful, we're all equals, and the sooner we stop the machismo bullshit and start acting like it, the better off we'll all be.

-j.j.

       

Written by :

Janus Jones