This Maleness Stuff Is Merely Women’s Studies in Drag

All my life I’ve been studying men, but I’ve never gotten any credit for it.

I’ve come up with all kinds of enlightened theories, supported by years of research in the field.

After seven years of marriage, for example, I understand about Man’s need to retain complete physical possession of the television remote control.

This is obviously an innate male characteristic that has evolved over the millennia from Neanderthal’s proclivity towards grunting and carrying big sticks. It makes Man feel in control. In this case, remotely. He likes that.

Hell, I could probably write a book about their kind, or at least a dissertation.

But when I was in school, nobody had even heard of Men’s Studies. Seems I was ahead of my time.

Today, says Massachusetts psychologist Sam Femiano, who is also co-chair of the National Men’s Assn., which is a committee of the National Organization for Changing Men, otherwise known as NOCM, more than 200 American colleges and universities are offering courses in Men’s Studies.

So you see that this is the stuff of serious academia. Papers and books are being written, conferences held. Lectures with such real-life titles as, “Curriculum as a Gendered Text: School and the Production of Male Sado-Masochistic Desire,” are being delivered.

All across the nation, even right here in Orange County , students and profs are mulling over the manly implications of everything from Conan the Barbarian to disposable diapers to the Vietnam War to Alan Alda to Liberace, in no particular order.

In other words, what we’re talking about here is Women’s Studies in drag.

Which is fine, of course. But let’s be frank. When’s the last time men have come up with an original idea?

Here’s what I mean. The other day, I sat in on psychology professor Carol Grams’ class at Orange Coast College. The title of the class is “Men and Women Today,” and the topic of discussion on this particular day was “Men in the ‘90s.”

Prof. Grams holds up a copy of a new magazine called Men’s Health. This is cutting edge stuff, right? I mean, this isn’t some girlie magazine or Soldier of Fortune. This is about men getting in touch with themselves as men .

(Got that? You would have if you’d taken Women’s Studies.)

Anyway, so what are the articles in Men’s Health about? Try “Age Erasers,” and “Burn Off Your Potbelly” and “Prescription Aphrodisiacs.” Change he to she and a Cosmo girl would feel right at home thumbing through this rag.

But I don’t mean to be unfair. If men want to know what it is to be a man, I think that’s great. Really. It’s about time.

Lord knows, women have been way ahead in this department. (And what with women having a tendency to say, “I told you so,” they outnumber men in the Men’s Studies classes.)

I mentioned this the other day, but it’s worth repeating. After all, men seem to be confused about these things.

The Roper Organization just released a survey on the state of men in America. A poll of 3,000 Americans found that men today are even more mean, manipulative, sexist, self-centered and lazy than they were 20 years ago.

OK, so all of the 3,000 respondents were women. Just goes to prove my point. Men would never say such nasty things about themselves. When it comes to men and manliness, men have a hard time being objective.

But it seems they are willing to learn. Some of them from the beginning. They’re enrolling in classes such as Martin Acker’s “Psychology of Men” at the University of Oregon at Eugene.

Here’s how the professor starts off his course outline:

The focus of this seminar is on an impossibly complex and not at all clearly defined area. Simply stated, the objective is to explore an approach or approaches to studying the dimensions of maleness, by first attempting to understand, at least to some extent, what some of those dimensions may be.

So you can see that men have a ways to go here. For starters, they have to figure out what they’re talking about.

That may take some time, but that’s fine. That’s good. At least I can decipher a willingness to try new approaches, explore new areas of thought. Because most men, as we know, have a tendency to get into ruts.

Oh, dear. Seems that’s yet another part of the male problem. Even Sam Femiano, father, husband and enlightened male, concedes that Men’s Studies seems to be attracting the already saved: women and male feminists.

Most men, he says, just aren’t into self-exploration.

And why should they be? Women have been handling that for them just fine.

Dianne Klein’s column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Klein by writing to her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7406.