While frequenting one of the media-sharing sites I check in on, I found one site asking men to chime in on what myths about males were untrue.
After going through the various posts, I can say I have really only encountered some of them. The two most prominent were that men can't cook and can't help but leave their cars cluttered and disheveled.
These two things have come up among women in the office who think those things must be true and must apply to me unless I'm weird. I assume they just don't actually know many young guys.
I snapped something in my leg last summer and iced it at home that night. Because I'm such an ingenuous guy, I found a bag of frozen green beans that made for a perfect ice pack. The ladies in the back found it unbelievable I would have green beans kicking around, because the only thing a single guy can prepare is one of those fully cooked and spiced chickens that are bought ready to serve at the grocery store, requiring no more work than a flick of the knife.
That they thought I didn't quite have the capacity to put some frozen beans in a bowl with water and stick it in a microwave for three minutes when I was hungry wasn't just offensive, it was outrageous!
What, I can't enjoy a good roasted red pepper with my chicken? I don't eat Hungry Man dinners and Hamburger Helper because I'm not in college anymore. Now I can just make my own damn food, out of actual real people food, because I'm a grown man.
I don't know where the idea that men have so much trouble in the kitchen started. I had an English teacher in high school who spoke about gender issues, which I just assumed weren't issues any more. I thought all those gender things were just silly social ghosts from the past like racism, homophobia and anti-dentites.
He talked about how food preparation in the home was the woman's job until it came to cooking outdoors where manly things like barbecues and fire are the modus operandi, because women can't cook with fire. That's generally the way it was between my parents when I was growing up, but I understand them to have had a frighteningly old-fashioned relationship.
I still know how to use an oven, cook a stir-fry and quarter a pepper. I like cooking, and I can flambé like a champ. What I don't do is bake, because real men do not bake.
Then there is the car. The first thing they say climbing in is, "wow, you're car is clean for a guy."
This stems from the idea that most men are slobs, comfortable surrounded by filth and too lazy to clean it up. I don't leave a lot of junk in my car and really don't understand how everyone else's cars could up with decades of debris. I'm just used to garbage always going in the trash. It can't just be women who throw things in the garbage.
Some people don't care about their vehicles, but if I'm going to be sitting in it as much as I do, I don't want to be surrounded by clutter. There must be other men out there who feel the same.
Everyone says it's men who don't understand women, and while we too, are prone to believing the hype behind stereotypes, it doesn't seem to me that women get men any better. We're all just a bunch of superfluous idiots trying to figure this thing out.
