Male Consciousness
All in the Kuratz?
by Scooper
1999
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. — Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist, 1891
Women know men have cultivated unconsciousness regarding accumulations of trash, dirty dishes in the sink, and mismatched socks. But we are also conscious in ways that are uniquely male.
To begin with, men have a greater spatial reasoning ability than women. This has been documented by many psychologists, none of whom has suggested what I think is the real reason for it: Men pee standing up.
Stand-up peeing is a complex spatial reasoning task. Based upon a sensation in the lower abdomen, a man stands an arbitrary (usually short) distance from a designated receptacle and, self-image in hand, performs micturition. Not one drop (except for the final shake) hits the floor or walls. It would take thousands of dollars worth of sensors, computers, actuators, and software to perform a similar feat. Yet men do it from early childhood, even in states of inebriation that impair their other functions.
Superior spatial ability is probably inherited because it exists even in male infants. I suspect this is because ever since civilization reached the cave-dwelling stage, women have preferred mates who could pee without spilling. In other words, don't get jealous of our spatial ability, ladies. Like cuteness into a Pekinese, you may have bred it into us.
As long as we are discussing the effect of anatomy on mentality, we may as well discuss explicitly the role of male sexuality in determining male consciousness. As a high-school buddy of mine said in Serbian accented English, "Every man has two brains: one in his head, the other in his kuratz."
You've seen guys like that: they run after their kuratz like a dowser following a divining rod. In their hearts they're saying, "I'll follow you anywhere, I'll do anything you want — just make me happy!"
Women, I'll tell you a secret: every man is like that during part of his life — usually between ages thirteen and fifteen, when puberty begins. And men, I've got a secret for you, too: real women expect us to grow out of that stage.
In addition to spatial reasoning and libido, the male mind includes a sense of social hierarchy. We first learn to achieve social status by beating each other up. Later on we get into team sports where we win status in our group by helping them symbolically beat up another group. We call this leadership, and make the guy who is best at it the team captain.
But it always returns to sex: leadership doesn't count if you can't get women, which means that status also involves being able to hold your own in locker room conversation. Liars and non-participants have to go back to beating people up, unless they want to get beaten.
This high school socialization replays itself in business, academia, government, and even church politics. In business, we talk about market penetration, in government we are always looking for new conquests to show the voters, and academic politics are so nasty because, as I believe Santayana put it, "the stakes are so low." And we always wonder about unmarried clergy.
Maleness is also identified with courage, an attribute of the head between the shoulders. In a society where we bash people who do unusual things with the head between the legs, this means that it takes real courage — you have to be a real man — to be gay. This creates conflict in the minds of those who are described by the women's quip, "It's better to be pretty than smart, because most men can see better than they can think."
Thinking used to be a masculine virtue, back in the days when our leaders were stout-hearted men, who could handle "the sword and the scythe and the pen." But the American Revolution is over: we're all suburbanites now, or suburbanite wannabes. Brains off, men of action. Mow that lawn, coach that baseball! Don't let anybody burn your team emblems, or show pictures of naked men, which might threaten the cooperative mating enterprise.
All this leaves modern men vulnerable when women exhibit current masculine virtues like courage and leadership or antique ones like intelligence. If women can be all those things, what can we be that's special and important? Well, we can be men. We can still walk into a bank with a kuratz that's worth at least one good credit reference — more if it's white. Ah yes, there's nothing like being straight, white, male, and moneyed in America! It's still the smoothest ride the planet has to offer. Enjoy it while it lasts, guys. Pretty soon we'll have to turn our brains back on and figure out who we are. Otherwise, it will be biology as destiny, and among the bees the drones get left out in the cold. Of course, when all else fails to establish our identity, we guys can always return to group violence. Nobody does it better.
