The (Wretched) Man Gene

It was inevitable.  The Man Gene’s MAN had to make news again.  Former President Bill Clinton, either the greatest beneficiary or victim of The Man Gene in recent history, hasn’t been exactly chaste since leaving office (at least, according to some tabloids), but his sexual exploits, if there were any, haven’t caused Monica-like coverage.  

A lengthy July Vanity Fair article (which is about much more than sex) says the leopard still has his spots.  His rebuke of the magazine’s revelations was quickly ridiculed.  The Vanity Fair piece must have been planned for release after Hillary secured the Democratic nomination and in the hope that Bill would become the nation’s first First Gentleman.  Since that’s not going to happen, there was just too much titillation not to go ahead with the article.

In juxtaposition to the Vanity Fair article is a much shorter article from the Wall Street Journal about “the sex effect” caused by, among other things, the TV show, now movie, Sex and the City.  Homogenizing these two articles requires the conclusion that Clinton the Male was ahead of his time.  Women in the workplace are now playing The Man Gene’s game.   Human resources professionals should be afraid.

The likes of Sex and the City have convinced women that they can be simultaneously successful in the workplace and liberated by fashion.  Thus, they bare their bosoms, midriffs and upper thighs at work.  The Man Gene approves.  Men possessing The Man Gene also approve.

Many women executives don’t approve.  Moreover, this new approach hasn’t improved the compensation of women or moved them up the corporate ladder.  Women executives who reach the top, few though they still are, exhibit high fashion but not noticeable flesh.

Just as Clinton can’t help himself, so it is for many men.  Most men may control The Man Gene better than the MAN, but it’s a struggle.  The struggle becomes merciless when cleavage, midriffs and upper thighs are openly displayed.  Women don’t understand this.  Men may not understand it.  But they–the men–know it, feel it, desire it, give in to it, and are seduced by it.  It’s certainly no justification for sexual harassment or for inappropriate language or conduct by men toward women in the workplace.  Some men embrace it as justification through The Man Gene’s deceit, but the law is clear.

Whatever happened to old line feminism?  Weren’t makeup and fashion and skin to be irrelevant in the workplace?  Weren’t we all, regardless of gender, just supposed to do our jobs and be judged according to performance? 

The Man Gene forced men to express disdain for this kind of feminism.  Do women now harbor similar disdain?  As expressed in the lament of an annonymous former male employee, sued for sexual harassment, fired by HR, scorned by employment lawyers, divorced by his wife, abandoned by male hypocrite friends, and mocked by flesh-exposed women:  “O wretched Man Gene, O wretched Man Gene, what hast thou wrought, O wretched, wretched, Man Gene.”

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   John Phillips says:

   June 20, 2008 at 11:14 am

   Thanks for linking to my post. Your carnival is the perfect place for “The (Wretched) Man Gene.”