Men's Hearts

My friend Dick is a Psychologist. I tell him Playboy has asked me to write about men's hearts. "That's a tough assignment," Dick says. "You have a majority of the population against you."

"The majority against me? Why?"

"The majority of the population is women," Dick says.

Dick has written books on feminism. He's knowledgeable about the politics of the women's movement, which can be pretty brutal. But I'm wondering if anything about men's hearts goes beyond politics, if anything more fundamental can be said.

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I am staying with a family in a thatched hut in a Tari village in New Guinea. I expect I will live among people in a state of primitive bliss. Instead, the husband and the wife fight long into the night. The baby screams. The other children look worried.

One day, the wife chops off her little finger. In New Guinea, this is a serious female protest against the way things are going.

I find the husband, Hebru, stomping around outside the house. He's wearing a grass skirt, feathers around his neck, a bone in his nose, bright-yellow paint on his face. He kicks the dirt for a while. "I don't understand that woman," he says in pidgin English, shaking his head. "I don't know what she wants."

Well, I could have told him. Hebru is about to marry a third wife, and this woman, his second wife, is unhappy about it. It's perfectly clear to me. Yet, according to Tari custom, Hebru is entitled to as many wives as he can support. If he has enough pigs to pay the bride price, he is entitled to take another wife.

So, from Hebru's standpoint, his second wife, Rose, has no business complaining this way, acting badly, cutting off her finger. She is behaving outrageously.

So there we are, standing in the morning sun, kicking the dirt and commiserating over a traditional guy's problem.

She isn't doing what she's supposed to.

She's mad for no reason.

She's unreasonable. She's impossible. Women!

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Men and women don't understand each other. They never have. Perhaps they never will. The battle of the sexes may be a permanent condition.

If so, how can it be anyone's fault?

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At a conference in Aspen, Betty Friedan argues that women are more moral than men. She receives a standing ovation from men and women alike. I refuse to stand. And seeing the men applauding and smiling, I think: If a man came to this conference and gave a speech in which he said that men were inherently more moral than women, the women would stone him to death.

So why are these men standing and applauding?

What has happened to men, anyway?

There is no question that men feel that they are under attack and psychologically beaten down. All sorts of horrible qualities are attributed to us: We are unemotional, we are brutal, we are violent, we are uncaring. We're lousy lays. We don't know how to find that clit. We don't know how to satisfy our mates.

We've been hearing this for more than 20 years. There are young American men who have heard nothing else.

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I am 45, old enough to remember a world before television and a world before feminism. Even in the quaint, simpler world of the Fifties, there was plenty of conflict between the sexes. A typical Sunday afternoon would find the men outside by the barbecue drinking beer and the women in the kitchen drinking coffee. And before long, each sex would be complaining about the other. The women were inside saying, "Men are such children, they're so helpless," while the men were outside saying, "Women are so helpless, they're children."

Each group bitched about the other in those simplistic terms. Everyone got his complaints aired before a sympathetic audience, and then everyone went home with his mate, feeling much better. Nobody really believed it.

But, 30 years later, it seems as if the Fifties' stereotypic view of men has been accepted in many quarters as true. The bookstores are full of books about how men hate women, refuse to grow up and are unemotional, unloving, violent. Television is full of men such as Alan Alda and Phil Donahue, who show by their enlightened example that ordinary men are insensitive, incapable of commitment.

There's some truth to all that, but there's also some exaggeration.

Many studies are shamefully unscientific; many spokespersons have a personal ax to grind; and much of the rhetoric simply doesn't match the facts. To take an example, the most accurate study of domestic violence concludes that women engage in it as often as men. That isn't widely discussed: Few men want to be known as wife beaters, but even fewer want to be known as wife-beaten. It's one of the places where the much-criticized macho-male image collides with the facts. Rhetoric is simpler than reality.

But meanwhile, men find they must defend themselves against the rhetoric, that they are inarticulate and won't express their emotions; that they don't listen; that they are unwilling to commit.

It's gotten so bad that when Friedan says men are often morally inferior, all the men stand up and applaud her.

Let's consider those complaints again.

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Are men inarticulate? Sure, sometimes. Expressing deep feelings is difficult, especially if you've been told--as most males have--that to express feelings is unmanly.

But I don't really see that women are able to express their feelings any better. Many women like to talk about feelings, as men like to talk about football and computers. But when it comes to talking about your own feelings, it seems to me that women suddenly stumble. In the workplace, around the dinner table, on that big date, I am not aware that a woman has an easier time saying the hard truths: that her feelings are hurt, or that she feels weak or sad or inadequate.

I don't see women powering through psychotherapy faster than men because they have easier access to their feelings.

I don't see lesbian relationships going more smoothly than heterosexual ones.

I don't see friendships between women going more smoothly than friendships between men. Plenty of female friendships collapse into nastiness.

I don't see any real evidence that women handle their feelings better than men do: Most child abuse occurs in single-parent homes headed by women.

In short, I think the stereotype of the inarticulate, emotionally unexpressive male is simply untrue. The truth is that expressing a deep feeling is difficult for anybody, male or female.

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Supposedly, men don't know how to listen, either. But here's my friend Lois, seated beside me at a dinner party, asking what she should do in Stockholm when she goes there next week on business. She's flattering me, treating me like the big travel expert.

But when I start to answer, Lois turns away and asks another man another flattering question. I am giving my answer to the back of her neck.

Lois' behavior is an exaggeration of a well-documented reality. Studies show that in social situations, women ask questions of men far more often than men ask women. It's a way of interacting. Flatter their egos. Keep 'em talking.

But as I see it, Lois isn't being sociable at all. She is making herself the center of attention by insincere behavior. She's a kind of conversational cock tease. I find her behavior hurtful and demeaning.

And later on, when we're alone, if she wants to tell me how men don't listen, she's got a big problem.

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Of course, it's in intimate situations that listening is most critical--when the other person is saying something you don't want to hear, don't want to deal with. But at those times, are men especially deficient?

Notice at work, or in some other non-intimate setting, how often you must explain again what you mean, to males and females alike. Notice how often ideas get scrambled and even inverted.

Communication is difficult even when nobody is angry or hurt or threatened. It's just plain difficult.

I don't find that women have any special gift here, either.

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Men won't make commitments? Let's face it: Commitment is hard for anybody. Watch a person in a store buying a shirt. "Oh, I don't know.... Is it me?... I'm not sure I like the color." On and on, for some lousy shirt that he'll discard in a year.

It's harder if you're choosing your college major. Or a paint color for the apartment. Or a new car. Or a job. Or a mate.

The more important the decision, the more difficult it is to make. The more tension that surrounds it, the longer it takes.

When I was young, in the Fifties, all the women were eager to get married and all the men were eager to stay single. That dynamic has changed, perhaps even reversed. But the point is, it was always a dynamic. There was always tension and disagreement: "Let's get married." "Not now." "Then when?" "I don't know. I'm just not ready to settle down."

One of the great ironies today is that women who aren't ready to settle down are doing a good thing--pursuing their careers and fulfilling themselves. Whereas (concluded on page 80)Men's Hearts(continued from page 70) men in the same situation are seen as unwilling to commit.

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In the end, complaints about men seem to come down to the issue of intimacy. Men aren't intimate. They don't know how to be. They avoid intimacy at all costs.

A woman I once lived with discussed our personal troubles with her girlfriends. Whenever I'd see those girlfriends, I was uncomfortable, because I knew they had been told all sorts of intimate things.

I mentioned this to my friend Elaine, a corporate psychological consultant. I said I felt betrayed by the fact that my girlfriend went outside our relationship that way. I said that in my experience, men didn't discuss their relationships in that sort of detail with other men.

"Of course not," Elaine said. "Men aren't intimate."

Well.

Evidently, Elaine wasn't listening, because I wasn't talking about men, I was talking about me. Second, Elaine was giving me a stereotypic reply, and a rather unthinking one, considering that she is a psychologist. And third, Elaine was newly divorced, 39 years old and living with an 18-year-old stud muffin. So, offhand, I'd say she was avoiding intimacy like the plague. Which is fine--in the battle of the sexes, we all need some R&R.

But where did she get the idea that it's men who aren't intimate? How could she say it so confidently, as if it were a truth universally acknowledged?

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A statistician of the sexes would draw a Venn diagram with two overlapping circles. According to any trait, men cluster in one circle, women in the other.

But the circles overlap.

We all know that is true.

Even in the simplest aspect of sexual dimorphism--such as the fact that men have more muscle mass for body weight the sexes overlap. What man has never cast an uneasy glance at the woman pumping iron next to him in the gym, trying casually to add up the weight she's lifting? And how many reps is she doing?

The fact is, there are aggressive women and passive men, physical women and verbal men, career-oriented women and home-oriented men.

It may be true that most men differ from most women in some statistical way. But we don't have relationships with "most men" or "most women." We have relationships with individual men and women. And when we apply the group stereotype to an individual, we are guilty of prejudice.

It's no longer acceptable to talk about shiftless blacks, mincing gays or drunken Irishmen. Why is it still acceptable to talk about intimacy-avoiding men?

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Most of the men I know want to please women, to be friends with them, to get along with them. Most of the men I know want sex and love and caring relationships in their lives. And on some level, we need our relationships with women more than women need their relationships with us. We are biologically frail: More male infants die in the first year of life, we don't live as long as women and we fare less well living alone. We don't need statistics to remind us. We know in our hearts.

How did we get to be defined as intimacy avoiders? It doesn't make sense, except as prejudice.

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When I look at people, I see individual human beings struggling to find love and fulfillment, using their skills, overcoming their drawbacks. Each human being has some behavior that he or she can do easily, almost without thinking, and other behavior that he or she accomplishes only with painful effort.

From this individual standpoint, gender doesn't seem very important. It's a detail, like where you were born. I can't say, "All men are this way," any more than I can say, "All Chicagoans are this way."

The generalizations won't stand up.

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On the other hand, intimate relationships are hard.

Communicating with another person is hard.

Getting along with another person is hard.

Trusting another person is hard.

Frankly, the easiest thing is to live alone. Then you can do whatever you want. No conflicting schedules, no competing careers, no restraints, no different ideas, no annoying other person to put up with.

But the thing is, then you're alone.

These days, men and women can live comfortably as singles, and 25 percent of the adult population now chooses to do so. There's plenty of fast food, plenty of takeout, plenty of services catering to singles. It's a convenient way of life.

But if you don't want to live alone, you'll have to put up with another person. And that other person just isn't going to be the person you want him to be.

At least not all the time.

That's just the way it is.

So how can it be anybody's fault?

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Faultfinding through male stereotyping has some unpleasant aspects that should be mentioned. The first is this: If you can adopt the position that you're inherently skilled in some aspect of relationships--say, intimacy--and the other person is inherently deficient, then you have an unbeatable position of power. The other person is always on the defensive. He will always have his hands full trying to prove that he isn't the way you say he is.

This is a control dynamic.

The second is this: If both men and women have trouble expressing intimacy, then both men and women experience tension in that area. A convenient way to get rid of that tension is to blame it on the other person. Everything would be fine if he'd just talk or listen or make a commitment.

This is a scapegoat dynamic.

The third is this: If you treat another person as a stereotype, he will feel it, and sooner or later, he will pay you back.

This is a revenge dynamic.

The fourth is this: If you treat another person as a stereotype, you will miss a great deal of delight and richness in your association with him.

This is a tragic dynamic.

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My friend Bill is an artist whose wife has just given birth to a son. Several of us go over to his house to see the new baby. "This is what it looks like when the baby's head starts to come out," he says, grabbing a piece of fruit, pushing it through his cupped hands. "It looks just like this." He is excited. He tells all about the birth. "It's a miracle," he says, his eyes misting. "It's a goddamned miracle."

An awkward silence falls over the table. We all look at our dinner plates. Bill is a tough guy, an unemotional guy, a guy wrapped up in his work.

Bill is crying.

Some people say that having a baby has changed Bill, but I don't think so. As far as I can tell, he is the same person he always was. He's still a tough guy and he's still wrapped up in his work. But, like everybody else, Bill has another side. And here he is, crying over the birth of his child, revealed for a moment as a more complex person than he's usually assumed to be.

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The older I get, the more impressed I am by the importance of human diversity. We're all so different--and a good thing, too. We need all kinds of people in the world. We need people who can express their emotions (actors, for example); we need people who are reflective, caring and intuitive. We need people who are interested in things, and people who are interested in people.

We need all the traditional opposites: artists and critics, coaches and players, bosses and underlings. Males and females. And somehow, we've just got to get along.