Two months ago, Alex posited that men had been somewhat castrated in the last few decades, and lost touch with their original masculinity. He called on them to reclaim it, to be the hunters they once were, before they learned to dress and decorate smartly. The idea is to Sure, help your girlfriend choose a dress, but then be a man and rip it off her. Make no apologies for wanting her. She’ll be the happier for it.

Alex’s recent posts on the topic have given rise to a bit of a polemic (English). I told him the other day that his ideas would be misunderstood, but I never guessed he’d be accused of calling for a return to traditional gender roles.

Here’s my weigh-in on the issue.

Gender lines having been blurred in our professional and societal roles, I think it’s important that we recognize our differences in our personal relationships to one another.

Let me put it this way:

My job is about planning, tracking, deciding. It’s about managing people, mostly creative, artistic men. It is very yang (male). During my last relationship, I handled all logistics, drove us everywhere, planned and booked the trips, made decisions. Yang. When I get asked why I wear skirts so often, I say it’s because I’d otherwise forget I’m a girl.

I don’t need a man to show me that I can do what he can. I want that to be taken for granted. What I want is for a man to be a man, so I can be a woman. To feminists who would say “rely on yourself to be feminine, need not another”, I say Please. All the lipstick, skirts and Oprah-goddess love in the world will not make you feminine if there is no masculinity. Same goes for underwiring or worrying about your ever-expanding ass. None of it will amount to being a woman without men, real men. There can be no yin without yang (not that kind of yang, perv!).

Now, maybe it’s the strong-willed, emancipated “Québécoise au sale caractère” that elicits the kind of laid-back apathy from men that Alex describes. Maybe our bulldozing will and determination makes it seem like any galantry would be insulting to our intelligence and independence. Maybe they think we like deciding and doing everything for ourselves all the time. If that’s the case, let me tell you here and now, in writing and for the universe to see, that the one thing we cannot do for ourselves, is be women. For that, we need you to be men. Princess Leia was a strong leader. But Solo was more of a man than she was, and that’s how he won her. He completed her. Around him, she was definitely the chick.

Sure it’s easy to make a highly feminine, hairspray chick feel like a girl. It’s quite another to do the same with one who whips your butt at Grand Theft Auto. You have to be more of a man, not less. Are you up to the challenge?

Treating a woman like a woman will not emasculate you. You’re not pussy-whipped if you help her on with her coat: you’re a confident man. You are pussy-whipped if you answer every question with “I don’t know, what do you think?”. You don’t rob her of her strength and independence by being stronger and taller, by offering to wait for the flasher outside her window with a baseball bat. You don’t rob her of her intelligence by celebrating her beauty. You do rob her of some of her femaleness when you ask “Why do I have to ask her out? Why doesn’t she ask me?”.

I can name all Fantastic Four, but I want to be a woman just as much as you need to be a man. Come up and introduce yourself. It’s ok if you have a beer first. Don’t assume I’ll be pissed off if you choose the restaurant, or if you tell me what time you’ll pick me up. I’ll love that. Propose an activity. Han Solo would. It’s even easy in my case, I tend to like the same things you do.

We promise to be women in return.