Top Easiest Ways to Emasculate a Dude (And Rule the World)

Get a Good Job

Step one to putting a dent
in the universe of lion pride is being paid well by a company who values you.
Just imagine how your husband would feel.

Make a Salary So Much as $1 More

Step two is to out-earn
him, stripping away from him the only thing he knows how to feel good for
because the culture has totally poisoned his idea of self-esteem and that is
your job to tiptoe around forever and never trigger at great personal cost to
yourself.

Have Opinions

According to repository of
lion pride, AskMen, all you have to do to chip away at the mansion of lion
pride you’re lucky to be living in is step 3: offer up your “pearls
of wisdom” when they are not needed (hint: they are never needed). Having
an opinion to a guy is like saying “I know something,” and worse,
it’s like saying “I know something and I think I should say it out
loud.” Even worse, it’s saying “I know something, I think I should
say it out loud, and I think that is ok.” Wrong wrong wrong. (And
emasculating!)

Offer Help in Any Way (Especially in Public)

Men don’t need help —
especially not from women. So step four: Offer it! As we’ve already
tried to tell you, opening a guy’s door is basically a ceremonial bat to
the balls before surgically removing them. Alternately, did you know that when
you offer a man your girly car (electric
blue Renault Clio with fluffy pink seat covers) to drive because his is in
the shop, you’re just doing it so women won’t check him out, which destroys his
ability to feel like hot shit? Make him walk. Nothing is more masculine than a
guy walking because his car is in the shop. Oh and if you really want to insult
him, adjust his tie before he goes into a big meeting, so you can instantly
transform him into a schoolboy on the playground getting his PB and J with the
cwusts cut off.

Make Him Do Things Only You Like

Step 5 (Oprah voice): Shoppppinnnngggggggg! When a man has to sit and
watch a woman shop (ladies still be shoppin’), all the other women know it’s
because he’s a dog on a leash.

Win at Anything He Likes Doing

Glurg, glurg, glurg.

Ask His Opinion But Still Do It How You Think It
Should Be Done

Apparently if a dude is
asked to speak his wisdom, and then that wisdom is not followed, the mountain
of lion pride begins to crumble. Step 7: Don’t do it, whatever it was.

Refuse to Guess What He Won’t Tell You

Step 8: Apparently if a dude never
talks about his feelings you are still supposed to know he has them, guess what
they are, figure them out, and nurture or respond to them even if you have no
idea whether they exist or to what extent — and remember, he never even has to
acknowledge them. And when you don’t do this whole charade, it’s mad
shitty.

Tell Him to Be the Thing He Always Says He Is

In numerous pieces
online about how simple
it apparently is to crush the male ego like an empty beer can, they bring up
one thing over and over (step 9): Even though a certain kind of dude is way into being a
dude and will cite that often as to why he doesn’t need to put up with any of
the above, if you even think about mentioning how dudely he isn’t, you have stabbed
an ice pick into the heart of the proud lion. Step back and behold the
potency you have maimed.

Okay, the Serious Part:

I don’t think anyone should be emasculating anyone (because I literally don’t get it — if someone can do that to you so easily, perhaps the foundation upon which you’ve built your identity is more harmful than helpful?), much less yelling at a dude to “be a man
already!” — to me this is part of the whole problem. But I suspect this happens in
relationships where “being a man” is cited often as an essential
identity in every choice and in the power balance of the relationship. Where
being a man and a woman is some huge part of how things are decided and felt.
Where these terrible scripts for how to act “because you’re a man or woman”
leave us all feeling less connected and we try to make sense of differences
through this script instead of putting aside the mask of gender and just
hashing out what we need from each other.

To be clear: Gender identity is not
inherently bad in the slightest —
liking even popularly held notions about what it means to be a man or a woman can
be enormously satisfying and complementary. But each of us must arrive at these identities in ways that are healthy and well-adjusted for us. And by using these identities to
pit men and women as oppositional, we muddy that potential harmony both within ourselves and with others. One of them
involves two equal deliberate players speaking sentences out loud, and the other places women forever in
service to men as caretakers of this delicate male ego. Funny, then, that there is no
real equivalent word in the popular lore for a man reducing a woman’s femininity
by simply being awesome in the world.

Image by the incomparable Jim Cooke.