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self-absorbed and sensitive are not the same thing
"But this new breed of sensitive straight guy is tricky. He looks masculine enough, in a scruffy, tending-toward-boyish way. But he’s vulnerable, emotional, subject to mood swings and fits of self-searching. He talks about his feelings. A lot. His fears and secret aspirations...He’ll sound sensitive. He is sensitive—but often more sensitive to his own emotions than to those of the woman sitting across from him at dinner."
first off, let's deal with the backlash. let's deal with those young men out there stranded in the wasteland between their father's misdirected machismo and their mother's burgeoning feminism. the men who were taught that they were not supposed to be aggressive and tyrannical, who were told that they should share their feelings and be sensitive, but never shown how. these men who are now defined as whimpsters and emo boys and dismissed, adrift in an uncomfortable middle-ground. men who, any second now (and with the generous help of the media I'm sure), will be turning their self-doubt and self-pity and self-loathing (the same things we all feel, every human on the planet) back on their girlfriends and ex-girlfriends and future girlfriends, saying "it is all your fault. you wanted me to not be a jerk, a pig, a misogynist, and so I became sensitive, and open, and passive and now you are complaining about that too. it is the fault of feminism and changing gender roles, it is your fault."
it is not our fault. it is not even our mothers' fault. it is ever-changing modernity and it is just what happened, so suck it up. not being aggressive does not mean falling into passivity and doing everything we say. not being misogynistic doesn't mean that you are now the victim and we the victimizers, the cruel, irrational heartbreakers. communicating does not mean talking about yourself all the time, constantly. it is not still all about you; we want it to be about us sometimes too. we want to be respected, for the support to go both ways.
we empathize, we really do (or else why would we keep getting sucked in, over and over again?), but don't put it on us. we are as lost as you. we are trying to figure out what a woman is these days, trying to figure out how to be feminine and empowered at the same time; how to not live our mothers' lives even though there are some parts of those lives we are envious of, would give our eyeteeth for; how to meet our heirarchy of needs without becoming a stereotype or lying prostrate to an ideal or losing ourselves in another person; how not to fuck up yet another career or relationship. we are too busy trying to sort our own shit out; we can't be bothered to figure out yours too.
so now that that's out of the way, the New York Observer brings you "Stuff It, Emo Boy!"
"Men have always assumed that they get the lion’s share of air time," Dr. Fels said. "It may be that this is the new fashion in how they monopolize the air time: If this is how women want it, I will talk in these terms. But it’s the same assumption that they will speak more, be listened to more, be supported more."