[coffeecrazy1]

This is inspired by the "girls are annoying" post.

For many years, men and women in the US resided in their respective gender-specific roles. Then, more recently, women decided they did not like their role, and fought back with various equality movements...some successful(suffrage), some not(ERA). However, one lasting result of the feminist movement is empowered women commandeering traditional male points of view(I'm speaking in terms of societal norms, not economic or political).

With this movement, men have become more and more feminized as time has gone by, never more evident than in the character of Ross on "Friends." More recently, there has been a bit of a backlash to this concept, with men acting decidedly more "chauvinistic" and exhibiting behaviors that are misogynistic in nature...where it boils down to essentially objectifying women to the point that they are simply points on a scoreboard (see also Tom Leykis and askmen.com).

Essentially, in popular culture, men are characterized as sissy-boy sycophants to the Almighty Woman, or apelike, overgrown children who are budding rapists, abusers, and deadbeats. Both of these POVs seem like extremes. Where is the middle ground? Where does the happy medium exist where we, as men, can treat women as fellow human beings, but not remove our testicles in the process? Or, does such a place not exist, and do we need to move to one camp or the other, and stay there?

I'm just curious...because after 26 years, I have never been more baffled about how to relate to women.