Men Can’t Be Men Anywhere
December 31, 2013
BILL McMORRIS, at The Federalist, discusses a subject that has been explored here before: the loss of all-male social clubs and its effects on male friendship. He writes:
I have a friend—a close one in fact, but we’d never say that aloud—who no longer goes to bars because he can’t enjoy a drink with Rihanna playing in the background. had him in mind when I formed an unofficial group of writers called The Drinklings. We congregate once a week at an undisclosed cigar bar, the last bastion of male territory (you can guess the sex of the person leading the charge against these establishments). The night begins with the same regulars, but every once in a while a woman joins us. The nature of conversation changes the second she arrives. The jokes become tamer, the social observations bland, and bar etiquette—paying cash for small tabs, never forcing a waiter to line-item drinks and food for a dozen people, not discarding $15 cigars after three puffs—goes out the window. The proverbial sawdust on the floor turns to egg shells: We’ve banished male attendees for less, but no one knows how to say no to a woman.
“That’s right, I’m crashing guy’s night,” a female friend gleefully announced when she arrived several months ago. As the marathon meeting wore on, her countenance ranged from unwilling dental patient to suicidal dentist. She soldiered on, relating at every turn of the conversation how much she was learning by “crashing guy’s night.” She left, the sighs of relief visible in the haze.
— Comments —
Buck writes:
Bill McMorris’s lament is on him and his friends. They own it, not the female “intruder.” As he and his friend said; they are making themselves miserable, not her. It need not be. This is one of the last, small and doable things that men can still control. They hand her the power. Think TradCon against modern liberalism; fear of acting against retribution. Their submissive behavior – in this context, as McMorris himself describes it, it is nothing but submissive – these guys act according to their now befuddled natures when a defiant female enters this kind of room. She doesn’t belong, and that is why she is there. She has no respect for them, yet they show her undeserved respect and they cower under her authority. Men love and respect women as women, not as masculine counterparts to females. Outside, of what these men weakly wish to be a male bastion, men naturally become gentle, as in gentlemen, until a women forcefully asserts that she is not and refuses to be seen or treated as a lady, but rather to be treated as a piece of meat. Well, you come into this room, with that attitude, then these men should show you the same respect that you are showing them. You want to be there, then you submit to room, just as the men do. You respect the room for what it is. You protect it and show that you appreciate its value to both men and women.
These guys need to man up. They sound pathetic.
I’m in one of several local cigar lounges once or twice a week, less than most of the regulars. Most of the fifteen or so regulars are there four to five times a week. A few everyday. Our primary lounge is frequented by three women. Two come with their husbands and Susan with her boyfriend. You wouldn’t know they were there. Little, if anything, changes. It remains solidly a male bastion under our control.
Susan comes with and, on occasion, without her boyfriend. She genuinely respects the room and everyone loves her for so well showing it. We all stand to hug her when she enters and leaves. We greet each other with ritual profanities. She comes to each of us. She’s demonstrating what she knows, and she is affectionately responded to for that. She tolerates profanity and all kinds of talk, but she never joins or reacts to any of that. During football games the other day, she brought two large bowls of her famous black-bean dip and set chips around on the tables for us, fitting them in among the ashtrays, and the various expensive single malts and mashes. What’s not to like?
Susan tames us just a bit, I don’t deny that that is a good. But she does so as a feminine woman, not as a gender morphing feminist female. And no male would survive there if he directed one hint of the kind of verbal abuse and profanity that we celebrate on each other toward her. She has earned her special place. She takes nothing from the room. She leaves it just as she finds it when she enters.
Laura writes:
It seems as if the atmosphere of your club could easily change. One or more members might also start showing up with their girlfriends, and even if they are as likable as Susan, the social dynamics would change.
Buck writes:
Clearly it could change. I’d be a hypocrite if I argued against the power of modern liberalism. As it stands right now, a female “intruder” like one that Bill McMorris describes wouldn’t be tolerated. Right now, our group is hanging tough and well aware of what is going on. We discuss it. We are all closely tuned in to the local lounge culture and to what we are all well aware of is going on outside those doors. If one of our proprietors decides to alter his business model, which ours has tried before, only to re-adjust to restore what he lost, then we’ll move on. I have and LLC formed, with proportional ownership and a sufficient number of members at the ready, should it prove necessary. That’s another defeat and retreat, no question. But, Susan will definitely be just as welcome there.
I’ll cut Bill McMorris some slack though; his situation is different. These things typically come down to economics in the modern United States, as opposed to some principle, articulated or not, as it once seemed to be in the historical America. Bill’s group meets in a bar which probably serves food and happens to allow smoking. Bars need female customers. A bar with no women is a dead-end business. Many, if not most guys will turn around and leave a bar that’s empty of females. Guys don’t go to our cigar lounges seeking female companionship. The majority, and the most regular, are married and are seeking to escape. We know that it is not a sanctuary, and that it may be temporary. But there is a hint of positive trend lately. More lounges are set to open and to compete for a recovering cigar business in our area. I know many of the owners and much of the scuttlebutt. But, I have no illusions. The state can change it all. I built manly retreats, built one in my own backyard. Smoke-friendly feminine women are welcome.
Laura writes:
Not many women like cigars or cigar smoke so I guess cigar clubs are one of the few legal options since they don’t need to be explicitly exclusive.
Mary writes:
I read the Salon piece Bill McMorris discusses. It brought to mind a one-man show my husband and I got free tickets to years ago called “Defending the Caveman.” If memory serves, the show was written by a man (who also performed it) in response to being called an a**h*** by a woman for his natural, defendable male behavior. The show delineates, in a comic way, the natural differences in the behavior of men and women. It was funny and charming, and I’m sure was disliked by anyone who wanted to believe there weren’t any differences.
One of the scenarios he described was that of the empty chip bowl in an all-male v. and all-female social setting. In the all female setting, the women come to realize that the chip bowl has emptied; two or more of them retreat to the kitchen, chatting happily, to refresh the snacks together, and return with fresh chips and a new dip to boot. In the male setting, all the men are watching the game intently and the empty bowl simply gets passed from guy to guy in a sort of hierarchical exercise, until one guy is either too hungry to leave it empty – or too low on the social totem pole to have anyone to pass it to – and reluctantly grabs the new bag of chips from the kitchen. I believe the closing line of this show was: “I am not an a**h***”. Although it may sound trite or coarse the way I write it, it was in it’s way very profound, a defense of masculinity and the dignity of the regular guy, written several decades ago when the vice was just starting to tighten. (it’s been many years so forgive any inaccuracies)
After being well-schooled in feminism in high school and college, the light started to go on for me many years ago when in a group of friends I was amused to observe that all the guys in the group called the one with the huge gut “Buddha”. Buddha loved his nickname. After a while it even became the affectionate “Boods”. The girls didn’t call him Buddha of course. They called him Jim. I can’t even imagine the expression on a woman’s face upon receiving a nickname from her female friends which was generated by her most obvious physical flaw.
I watch my boys with their friends and with each other. I find their behavior very, very touching, for in it I see the makings of the men they will become as they grapple with growing up. They, of course, make up nicknames for each other (Gollum?!) and play sports but also one-up each other, mock each other, make each other laugh, make each other mad, debate, race, wrestle, see who can do more push ups, play games, get bored, argue about what to do to be un-bored, succeed in getting un-bored, and on and on. There is not much intimate conversation, but that is not to say there is no intimacy: the bonding that they are experiencing is the masculine form of intimacy. I can see them being strengthened by it, physically and mentally and, yes, emotionally. I hope that masculine intimacy makes these boys friends for life, that they support each other as grown men in work, in the faith, in family life, and that healthy culture is reinforced in them and through them to the next generation and beyond.
There was a time in this country when neither men nor women had time for hours and hours of “sharing”. Life was difficult and the hours were filled with hard work, sleep, and then more hard work. This doesn’t mean there weren’t close family ties, and real friendship, and, of course, intimacy – not the faux-intimacy Wade describes but true intimacy, in the very best sense of the word, born not of naval gazing together but of working and suffering and celebrating together, of living out life as a Christian. All this talk of men needing female-styled intimacy is one more example of what happens to a culture when it is steeped in ease and luxury and the absence of the transcendent. It is the most embarrassing of all feminist conceits that we have finally gotten love and sex and relationships right after all these centuries; that the enlightenment is complete in this disastrous age, which is filled with a unique and unprecedented brand of suffering born of immorality.
As far as the cigar smoking gatherings go, why not have them in a private home? Get a pool table, a bottle of good scotch and a smoke eater (or not) and start sending out the engraved invitations. A sign on the door could read, with impunity: No Girls Allowed.
P.S. There are very beautiful examples of real male friendship, intimacy and love for boys and men alike in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Buck writes:
Mary writes: “As far as the cigar smoking gatherings go, why not have them in a private home?” It’s a very rare guy who will smoke up his own living space, married or not. I know of one who lives alone; he’s disabled and dislikes people. Hard woods, leather seating and no fibrous material will help, but some kind of noisy mechanical system is necessary, unless enough windows are open to a breeze. Another friend insists that he has isolated one lower-level room from his home’s HVAC. That’s not easy, but is doable. He has to run two different kinds of air-cleaners, an eater while smoking and the a cleaner around the clock when he’s not smoking. Air supplies/returns, doors, switch and plug plates, light fixtures…, everything has to be sealed and caulked and the room has to be kept at negative pressure. Now you need a separate source of heat to now evacuate to outside. It’s a good deal of trouble.
Even men who love cigars dislike the stale smell left behind. If they enjoy family when they’re not smoking…then they don’t smoke in their own home. Smoke eaters simply don’t begin to get it done. You have to mechanically evacuate the now smoky but expensive conditioned air from the space. I’m in the business and have scrutinized every available scheme. The best cigar bar in DC spent $125k on a system that is completely overwhelmed by a crowd. Rush Limbaugh spent a fortune on a state-of-the-art thermal displacement system for just three rooms in his palace. I couldn’t afford the necessary electricity. That’s why the lounges are full in the winter. When the weather is nice, we relax outside. Two local restaurants allow evening smoking on their patios.
Having said all that, the best is a detached space with a excellent drafting large open fireplace. Better yet would be a tepee with a raging fire in the center.
