Interesting conversation with a coworker

I am a registered nurse working in a rural access emergency room. Recently I was doing a change of shift and a female coworker of mine who is about 50 years old or so, was mentioning to us that she had made a mistake scheduling her vacation time for her wedding anniversary. She had forgotten that her anniversary was on whatever day and had taken her vacation time for the wrong day. Her husband is the one who caught her error and reminded her of the correct date of their anniversary. “Oops!” was essentially her feelings about the matter. No biggie. An honest mistake. And that’s really all it was.

She asked me if I had ever forgotten my anniversary date, and before she had even finished the question, I already knew exactly how this entire conversation would play out. In my 11 years of marriage, I have not forgotten our anniversary. I told her this. Her response was predicted, as I suspect about 100 million women in the US (and a disappointingly high number of men, as well) would probably respond the same way.

“That’s because your wife has you trained up right.”

While predictable, the statement was no less confusing in the context. Confusing because the implication is that men are too dumb to remember anniversary dates without training, but she herself had forgotten her own anniversary date.

I told her that the Army had trained me, but my wife had not. That would require her to be an authority figure over me, and for me to be subordinate to her, which was not the dynamic in our home. Her reply was predicted again. “OHHHHH! You’d better not let your wife hear you say that!” Another implication, this one being that my wife would enforce consequences on me for stating that I am not her underling who requires training.

I told my coworker that if my wife was present, she would not hear me say that at all, simply because my wife would have said it herself first. And then came the next predictable statement, “She just lets you think that’s true. You haven’t figured it out yet.” Another implication of my own masculine stupidity. I just said “Ah, yes. I see.”

At no point in this short discussion did I ever imply in the slightest that I myself was in charge and that my wife was actually my subordinate. She is not. I didn’t continue the discussion simply because I was ready to go home and I didn’t feel like I owed the lesson to my coworker who had unintentionally implied that I am a retarded animal in need of house training. This coworker has never treated me poorly and has complimented my wife and I on how well we treat each other. I took no actual offense because the attitude she displayed is ingrained in American women like memory on a flash drive. It doesn’t require any complex thought or processes. It’s just the automatic societal response to the idea that a man might not be an unthinking idiot.

I discussed this my wife when I got home and she was in agreement about how this sort of thing plays out. It goes without saying that neither one of us is the underling to the other. Our house is managed the way the Bible dictates, with me as the leader and my wife as the support. The home (the family) can not stand without a leader and it can not stand without the support.

God is the foundation of the family. The man is the leader and protector. The wife is the support. Imagine this as a concrete foundation, walls made of brick and wood and a roof made of metal and wood (trusses). Our home has a metal roof. Now remove any one of those things, and you’re completely screwed.

From the time men are boys we have heard things like “Happy wife, happy life”, and “If Momma ain’t happy, then nobody’s happy”. These are comedic sayings, harmless, not meant to hurt anyone, easy to laugh at and elbow the guy next to you and say “That’s true, ain’t it Jim?” Without trying to sound like an overly sensitive snowflake, I like to examine what kind of things are implied by societal axioms like these, and what similar ideas are consistently implied that don’t necessarily have common sayings attached to them. The idea is that there is a value hierarchy, with the women of the home being at the top, and the men and boys of the home at the bottom. Not a leadership hierarchy or a love hierarchy but a value hierarchy. If you’re a boy, it’s implied subtly, never directly, that you will eventually reach an age at which your happiness is of low value, and your purpose is to provide happiness to those who’s happiness is of high value, and that the value is dependent on gender. The other subtle implication is that if the goal is not achieved, there will be consequences. If the sexes in this exchange were reversed, we’d be calling it emotional abuse.

It would be easy for someone to say “Aw, come on, no one means anything by it.” But what’s funny is that if you challenge the idea, suddenly you find that many men and women are very emotionally invested in the ideas that these harmless adages imply. You quickly find that people are totally fine with the implications, but would never be alright with it if the genders were reversed. “If Daddy ain’t happy, then nobody’s happy” sounds strange. It sounds like a threat.

Chris Rock is credited with saying that women, children and dogs are loved unconditionally, while men are loved under the condition that they are able to provide something. While this is not directed at any specific person, this is true for society in general. If this statement or this article makes you angry, whether you’re a man or a woman, you might need to examine your own thoughts on this subject. If you are a “Happy wife, happy life” kind of man, then now is the time to rethink that. Your own happiness is absolutely of equal importance as your significant other’s. I’m not talking about buying more video games or more guns (Don’t take this the wrong way, I do want more guns) or more cars. It’s not about material or money. It’s about worth. Men are undervalued in western society and this is indicated by our media, academia, politics, all the way down to the little jokes we tell in our homes.

I’m not saying that you should censor yourself and stop saying things like “If Momma ain’t happy…”. It’s a funny thing to say and it’s part of old Americana.

I’m saying that you need to make sure that you and the men and boys around you fully understand their worth. They need to understand their value in the home and family, their community, their country and the world. There is an epidemic of suicide among men in the US. The majority of suicides are men. These are men who have forgotten their own value and meaning. The majority of incarcerated people are men. These are men who have abandoned their own value to society. The vast majority of custody cases see men having their children removed from them. These are men who are being told “You have no value to your children”, and likewise their children are being taught “Your dad is not valuable to you.”

These issues are not being well addressed, and I feel like that is largely because an honest researcher would have to conclude that these are men’s issues, and in order to solve them, you have to reestablish that men have equal value and are worth helping. The west simply has not fostered the kind of environment where this can be stated with any positive response. This is something that will likely take an entire generation to change. 15-20 years. Our boys have to grow up knowing their value. The world needs them, badly.