Men in general are the subject here, not a few particular specimens of their sex personally known to me. Free of personal entanglements myself, I may be more likely to give men their due, and to wish that the intelligence of more women were seasoned with compassion, perception and sense.
As a child, Pamela Churchill Harriman, resourceful Englishwoman and famous lover and handler of men, was said, in a biography, to have assured her mother that some man would show up to help them out of a predicament. Little Pam gleefully accepted her vindication when, in short order, a man did come along and did just that. A local man of the Dorset countryside, he may have been a farmer or horse dealer.
I love that man for seizing the chance to assist a woman and little girl (also for his ability to do so, which he might not possess today). I particularly love Pam and her mother for not having bawled at him, “no thanks, we can handle it!” In fact, it was the 1920’s and few females could have made that claim. Nowadays, many women can haul lumber out of Home Depot and lash it to the top of a car. But is that so splendid? What’s so great about eagerly depriving men of opportunities to be of service, especially for tasks at which male prowess is likely to be superior?
The long and winding road of feminism-led social change has brought some salubrious and admirable things, including the emancipation of men from unquestioned, onerous duties. Women attained independence and a great broadening of opportunity. That was the idea.
However, it also kept intact such female roles and prerogatives as women wanted to retain while traditionally male counterpart birthrights steadily atrophied. Men are not needed, thank you, for driving, suitcase carrying, or furniture kit assembling (although I still see women standing awkwardly by while men change tires, which gives me a perhaps inglorious satisfaction). Women are needed for a lot. Moreover we are not discouraged from being feminine. I doubt many women try to debunk the received wisdom that a baby’s more essential parent is the mother. Women are not put down for trying to look attractive. When a woman sets the table for a meal, men don’t say, “oh, don’t bother, I don’t need that feminine silliness.” In fact, I have seen men look at a nicely set table with a kind of cautious, respectful regard, almost as if they were wondering if they were worthy of one of the place settings.
Since time out of mind male virtues (let’s use a positive term) have included competitiveness, aggressiveness, courage, providing for and protection of family. Male facility for focusing on problem solving has given us many magnificent inventions. The discrediting of masculine characteristics (when associated with men) has been tireless. Competitiveness can be found, one quickly asserts, in an eight-year-old female soccer player. Aggression means violence. There is nothing especially masculine about courage. We don’t need men to protect us. Women, too, could focus on some creative work if they could escape the kitchen for a few hours.
The effect of devaluing so much of what men seem naturally to be has been to greatly reduce opportunities and outlets for men to make a mark in life. My high-school educated father served in the World War II Navy, took up photography and made beautiful pictures that hang on my wall today. He taught me how to use a darkroom. He built a house that took 50 years to start needing serious repairs, spent thousands of hours landscaping his property, fixed his own cars, worked for decades at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, saved enough money for my mother to live comfortably after his death and -- justifiably content with the beauty of his yard -- took very few vacations in the 91 years of his life. Today’s college graduate who still has little to show but a small organic garden on the sunny side of his apartment house doesn’t – yet, anyway – stack up to much next to my father. But he probably will not, even with time and effort, because in today’s world it is difficult for a young man to duplicate my father’s accomplishments. To name just one thing, if he wanted to fix cars, he would be thwarted by all the automotive electronics that now help to make men increasingly helpless.
I love all the men in my father’s age group who would have liked to cook but kept quiet about it, restricted as they were to bringing in money, reading about places they would never get to see, repairing the lawn mower and being the only person in the home who had to think about the septic tank.
I love the editor, perhaps now former editor, of a military magazine, who once accepted, upon receipt, my written position against women in combat. With the military under pressure to actively prize equal opportunity over efficacious defense of the country and prosecution of its wars, he accepted my piece with an alacrity no writer would normally dare hope from an editor.
Speaking of the military, I see no reason not to have a soft spot for General David Petraeus, whose record of accomplishment – so far – is regarded by countless underachievers as a cut above toilet paper simply because he got caught doing something that millions of other heterosexual people in the world were doing at the same time.
I can't very well declare love for thousands of male construction and manufacturing workers simply because they lost their jobs but I do harbor a sympathetic understanding of why they would balk at retraining as nurses’ aides. A man close to me, involuntarily separated from his executive job several years ago, is currently deriving happiness and satisfaction from a blend of intellectual interests, outdoor activity, family life and domestic responsibility. But not every man can achieve that, or wants to.
I love the elderly man who contributed his failing voice to the holiday carol sing at an apartment building for seniors. A man with an impressive professional record, he was the lone male in a chorus of high-pitched, female reminders that men die first.
I love the late actor Jimmy Stewart for what he told an interviewer in his last years. “I’ve had a wonderful life. I thank God for it.”
All this has evolved for me, of course. As the social tide slowly turned and the position of women improved, it took me awhile to care that men were confused and struggling to please a changing world that was obviously uninterested in pleasing them. Served them right, didn’t it? For centuries they breezily turned down any chances to treat women better. But two things come to mind here. During those centuries life was pretty tough for most men, too. In addition to being deprived of the prosperity and comforts we take for granted today, most individuals were straitjacketed into roles and constraints that offered them almost no choices. Second, it reminds me of something in Christopher Buckley’s memoir, Losing Mum and Pup. He postponed a California trip in order to stay with his sick father, whose priorities over the years had not exactly suggested the busily famous William F. would have done the same for his son. To be a decent person, you have to do the right thing, not what someone else did.
This personal growth in perspective and maturity must have evolved for many women in the same way and over the same time period as it has for me. I hope so, because if I’m the only one, then our social progress so far will not have been of a very high quality.
Men in general are the subject here, not a few particular specimens of their sex personally known to me. Free of personal entanglements myself, I may be more likely to give men their due, and to wish that the intelligence of more women were seasoned with compassion, perception and sense. 
