Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 15, 1994 TAG: 9405190006
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By ERIK ECKHOLM THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
This man blithely made a remark to his wife about the skater's plentiful gifts - without serious repercussions.
Ten years ago, this same man reflected, he might not have allowed his eyes and thoughts to wander as they had. What was sure, though, was that he would never have mentioned it to a woman for fear of being thought an unreconstructed pig.
Was this an epiphany? Was it a minor sign, at least, of a healthier, more honest sensibility guiding relations between the sexes? Was the Post-Sensitive Man speaking out?
So says Esquire magazine in an article on the latest effort by long-bewildered heterosexual men to define themselves.
The May issue trumpets the ascendance of the Post-Sensitive Man, one who treats women with respect but no longer needs to feel guilty ``for the crime of simply thinking and feeling as men always have,'' as the article's author, Harry Stein, puts it.
The Sensitive Man, who re-created himself in response to feminism - condemning the macho spirit, proclaiming emotional openness and purging prurient thoughts - was always something of a fraud, asserts Stein, who is 45 and married.
What's more, everyone was still dissatisfied, anyway. He suggests optimistically that today, in the easy-going acceptance of the inner differences between men and women and an end to self-righteousness on all sides, lies the possibility of ``genuine understanding between the sexes.''
But is all this talk too convenient, a beguiling rationalization that in practice will just let men go back to being dogs?
That is a matter of dispute, but there is more here than just a call to return to the bad old days. Many of those involved in the new celebration of maleness tend to accept feminism's practical goals of equality, want to spend real time with their children and are earnestly righteous about ethical behavior, if not pure thoughts. Indeed, insincere posturing is said to have interfered, somehow, with the exercise of manly character.
In the 1980s, just as some men thought they were beginning to get it, the stereotype emerged of the overly solicitous man, who was also, as a result, ineffectual. In some quarters, male and female, Sensitive Man started to become an object of ridicule.
Gloria Steinem, who as a founder of Ms. magazine and a feminist thinker probably did more than anyone else to foster the birth of Sensitive Man, questioned both the premises and the motives of the post-sensitive promoters.
Steinem said in an interview that far from being objects of ridicule, sensitive men are still works in progress.
``Anyone who departs from traditional gender roles, male or female, always gets a certain amount of derision, but it's much less than ever before,'' she said.
``And the point of feminists was always to encourage men to say how they felt, not to encourage them to be dishonest.''
Steinem charged Stein with having nostalgia for a golden past - the nonviolent man's form of resistance.
Sensitive Man as portrayed in popular culture was always a caricature, of course. But the signs of his discrediting have been building, along with male confusion. (We speak of those heterosexual men, mainly in their 30s, 40s and 50s, who ever gave a thought to any of this.)
Adding to the jumble in the 1980s, a profusion of bare-skin and erotic poses began to fill the most mainstream of magazines, and without general condemnation. Was ogling, then, officially sanctioned?
The most jarring sign that men were flailing was the emergence of the so-called men's movement.
The drumming, the retreats, Robert Bly's Wild Man within (at once exquisitely sensitive and powerfully masculine) - to most people of either sex, it seemed all too ridiculous. But a point was registered.
No less nice a guy than Garrison Keillor wrote in his introduction to the best-seller ``The Book of Guys'' (Viking, 1993): ``Years ago, manhood was an opportunity for achievement, and now it is a problem to be overcome.''
In a voice that seems only partly satirical, he laid blame for male desperation on the fruitless competition for ``a stamp of approval, Friend of Womanhood.''
Many younger men saw in Sensitive Man a stereotype to avoid at all costs.
``It's now so freighted with Alan Alda-ness, I can't imagine anyone wanting to be described exclusively as a sensitive man,'' said Andrew Postman, who is 32 and single and has served as a frank interpreter of men's emotions to millions of women through his frequent articles about sex and relationships in Glamour and other magazines.
Postman has just written a semiautobiographical novel, ``Now I Know Everything,'' to be published in early 1995 by Crown Publishers.
It is about a man who writes about relationships in a women's magazine column, yet finds himself just as clueless as anyone else in his own life. He said that in college he learned to be suspicious of guys who majored in women's studies.
``I thought they were doing it because it gave them a better shot at sleeping with women,'' he said.
At the heart of the dispute between Post-Sensitive Man and traditional feminism - the likes of Camille Paglia, of course, could make Stein look like a prude - is the question of intrinsic differences in the inner lives of men and women.
Some men believe there is an inborn male nature, cruder and more impulsive in some ways than female nature and certainly, in any case, tending to be different.
Feminists, meanwhile, assert that the more loutish male traits have been socialized by a loutish culture.
Post-sensitive men say it's useless to wish away the differences, many of which, not surprisingly, involve sex.
``Men do tend to react to women very largely on a sexual basis,'' Stein contended in an interview.
``A big part of themselves had to be denied, claiming that it wasn't so. I certainly never want to say that that is the exclusive way men react to women, but it's usually the first reaction, and it's a powerful one.''
As important as admitting to that, he adds, is behaving responsibly. Men need not be ashamed of their ability, as he puts it in the article, to think hard about two things at once - ``like, say, a domestic policy briefing and what's under the tight, pin-stripe business suit of the woman delivering it.''
The point is not to let the biological reality intrude in an inappropriate way. He would never be unfaithful to his wife, but he can admit that he notices attractive bodies at the beach.
Steinem rejected Stein's portrayal of maleness.
``He has such a negative view of men, assuming they are animalistic and destructive and can only be kept in check by personal repression and legal rules,'' she said. ``His opinion of men is far more negative than mine.''
by CNB