Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, May 14, 2009

Men want the same thing from their underwear
that they want from women: a little bit of support,
and a little bit of freedom.

- Jerry Seinfeld, whose program showed its last
episode on this date, 1998

25% of all Americans watched the last episode of “Seinfeld”. 78 Million people. Imagine. Clearly, something about that series grabbed us. I think (a propos of what I wrote yesterday about honesty) it had to do with honesty and reality. How refreshing.

Humour like Jerry’s is very hard to “use”. Good “humour” verges always on the borders of the “unacceptable”, at least from a hypocritical popular perspective. People like Jerry Seinfeld “speak the truth” – which most Americans know is the truth but which they can’t acknowledge as such because of the ingrained hypocrisy of the culture.

What do you think about Jerry’s comment? Is it accurate? Alas, I don’t think so – though that may be because I am a cynic when it comes to heterosexual men. I think that American men in general want their women to give them too much freedom, allowing them to disregard treating women as equal human beings. And I think that they expect from women – because they fail to see womens’ equality - too much support for their selfish, self-satisfying, self-aggrandizing, irresponsible, childish behaviour. Most men still regard women as “property, and still treat them as inferior and as “slaves”. I have seen this over 40 years in ministry. Most men don’t want “a little bit of support”. They want women to condone their every inhuman idiocy. And they don’t want a “little bit of freedom”. They want women to condone their “right” to do and have what they want at any cost. I find it disgusting. No wonder so many women I know long for lovers who are like Gay men!

I would like to be very very wrong in my perspective on heterosexual men in American culture. I really would. I would also like to be wrong about heterosexual men in other cultures – particularly all patriarchal cultures, and in religious cultures like the Muslims, Mormons, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, American Evangelicalism, British classism, and a vast number of other “institutions”. But I know I am right.

Jerry, with his humour, tried (I think) to point out our folly, our delusion, our self-deception. Men laughed at Jerry because they saw their own behaviour portrayed accurately and were able to deceive themselves that Jerry was “on their side”. Wrong. I loved Jerry Seinfeld because he exposed the utter stupidity of the heterosexual male failure to evolve spiritually.

I applaud every heterosexual man who looks at this portrayal and can honestly say, “I am NOT like that“– and prove it by their treatment of women!

Brian+