Men versus sensitivity

Recently, I received rather an interesting forwarded message from a friend. It’s on “Why men aren’t allowed to run ‘love and advice’ columns in magazines and newspapers”.

It seems, once a magazine had hired a male to handle the advices section. During this time, the male advisor, from an anonymous lady, had received a mail, which contained the following lines.

“Sir, last Sunday, before setting off on my weekend shopping, I decided to leave my little son with my spouse and the servant maid. I had driven a little distance when my car conked off, maybe due to overheating of engine. Taking an auto, I zipped back home to take my other vehicle. Using a spare house key, as I stepped inside, I was staggered to see my spouse, shamelessly snuggling with the servant, sans smidgen of guilt. I stood there with pole-axed look, looking petrified, perplexed and perturbed. Please advice on what should I do.” To this, the reply she got was as follows.

“Overheating of car engine can be triggered by problems linked with carburetor. So, see that the carburetor is in fine fettle, so as to pre-empt such problems in future. And, before embarking on driving sessions, just cast an eye on the oil and water levels. Regular car serving also helps in circumventing such hassles.”

Well, jokes apart, from centuries, men’s nature, compared to women’s nature, has always been misconstrued as being cold, clinical and callous. On the contrary, we see some of the women, the ruthlessly ambitious lot, not minding forsaking even their family’s harmony/happiness, just to be ever on radar-screen at the professional front.

Also, often we see many women, by their wily machinations and mind-games, always thwarting the successes of others around them. So, it’s indeed a fallacy to say men are less sensitive and caring. Incidentally, men aren’t intrinsically insensitive. It’s the mental conditioning, right from the embryonic stages of their mind development, besides social and societal upbringing, which are instrumental in influencing their nature.

Sometime back, I had seen a social-campaigning telly ad, in which a small boy, whenever he’d be crying over something, he’d be getting harshly admonished by his parent, sibling, teacher, and others, who’d be saying, “You aren’t a girl to shed tears.”

Which means, it’s indoctrinated and subliminally internalised in men, that the qualities of being super-egoistic, hard-boiled, domineering, hectoring, bulldozing, etc, are all synonymous with machismo. While being considerate, compassionate or feeling mushy/emotional, are equated with being namby-pamby, milksop, poodle, effeminate, and so on.

If only, like the way it’s strongly conveyed in that ad film, instead of telling the weeping young boys, in their childhood days, “It is sissy to cry,” if only they are told, “It’s sissy to make others cry,” maybe, we’d get to see the ‘actual’ sensitive side of many men around us!