Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?

Last week I realized that my friend Cheryl is in a lesbian relationship . . . with her boyfriend of four years.

This accidental discovery surfaced when their recently purchased dream house sprang a plumbing leak so massive that the water department turned off their supply to halt the flooding on their neighbor’s property. In the midst of the ensuing chaos, Cheryl’s boyfriend meticulously fussed over his wardrobe before decamping for the calmer climes of his office, leaving her to deal with the water department, the insurance company, various contractors, and the bank, not to mention a nasty, disgruntled neighbor.

This struck her as distinctly (how to put it nicely?) . . . unmasculine.

And she’s not alone. Another friend of mine is married to a linebacker of a guy who always wants to talk about his feelings. Although this drives her crazy, she admits she knew what she was getting into. When they were first dating she frequently remarked that he was “like the girl in the relationship.”

What’s going on here? In our drive for professional, political and cultural equality, have we unwittingly short-circuited the basic wiring of the Y-chromosome? Has feminism (gulp) gone too far?

Before acquiescing to my writerly destiny, I was trained as an architect. I’ve drawn plumbing plans, supervised plumbing contractors, and dealt with city planning departments and building inspectors. While in the midst of designing and managing the renovation of a 1920's-era 16,000 s.f. mansion, the ceiling in my parents’ kitchen came crashing down under the weight of a leaky pipe in their second-floor bathroom.

My mother and my sister each called and said, in different ways, “I think you better come take a look at this and make sure it gets handled properly.” My brother, on the other hand, never even considered getting involved. My father’s house was my father’s territory and my brother viewed it as crossing a line. Turns out, my father viewed it the same way—and told me so in no uncertain terms. Offended, I rolled my eyes and chalked it up to “male ego,” the giant catchall of inexplicable male behavior.

My friend Nick chuckled knowingly when I related this story. He told me about his brother-in-law, who’s extremely handy with everything from hanging a picture to building a deck. “Whenever something needs to be fixed around the house, my wife immediately says to call my brother-in-law. I get that his qualifications, skills and workmanship are all better. But it’s my house. If I get my brother-in-law to do it, I might as well be my wife.”

Nick explained that it goes beyond a man and his cave. It’s also about men hanging out in the sweat hut. “When you’re talking with other guys about work you’re doing on your house, they’ll ask if you hired someone. When I say No, I took care of it myself, my voice actually gets deeper and I stand up straighter."

I see his point. And with the passage of time I can understand my father's perspective, as well. Although my intentions were good, I was barging into his territory, running roughshod over his innate role as provider and protector. What the distaff side of my family viewed as a straightforward issue of qualifications, along the lines of "the right tool for the right job," my father viewed as emasculating interference. But perhaps our mistake was understandable. Perhaps in the drive for equal opportunities we have all sometimes confused “equality” with “sameness,” failing to understand our basic differences in any meaningful way.

I don’t know whether the Y-chromosome has been hopelessly short-circuited in some men. But it seems to me that it’s time for another paradigm shift, time to move beyond outmoded ideas of feminism and embrace an ideal of mutual interdependence. We’ve proven that women can do it all—now let’s prove that we can just relax about the whole thing. When we genuinely appreciate the fact that men and women are wired differently, we make room for the men in our lives to be men. After all, any woman who genuinely likes men wants a man to be a man.

Interestingly, Cheryl is on a testosterone regimen for lack of sex drive. I can’t help thinking that if her boyfriend was the one taking the hormones, maybe he’d be the one dealing with the plumbing issues and she’d be having orgasms.

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Photo credit: "gringos" by zampano!!! via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

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