Mankeeping

Please just stop.

Recently the New York Times published an article headlined:

Men: Why Are They Such Idiots?

Not really! Although that is the gist of the article. The actual headline is:

Why Women Are Weary of the Emotional Labor of ‘Mankeeping’

"Mankeeping" is a word invented by Angelica Puzio Ferrara, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, who co-authored a research paper titled "Theorizing Mankeeping: The Male Friendship Recession and Women’s Associated Labor as a Structural Component of Gender Inequality."

Basically what this paper says, if I understand it correctly as both a man and an English major, is that heterosexual males these days don't have enough male friends (the "male friendship recession") and as a result they have to rely on women to tend to their emotional and relationship needs, and this "mankeeping" is A LOT OF WORK for women, and they are TIRED OF IT.

"The concept has taken on a bit of a life of its own," states the Times, "with some articles going so far as to claim that mankeeping has 'ruined' dating and driven women to celibacy."

As an example of mankeeping, the story cites a Los Angeles woman named Eve Tilley-Colson, who is a busy attorney as well as (it goes without saying) a content creator. The story says she's in an relationship with a man who's also a busy attorney, "but she tends to take charge of their social plans." And that's not all she feels responsible for:

"When are we going to meet each other’s parents?" she asks. "When are we going to go on our first vacation together? And if all of that onus is on me to kind of plan, then I also feel all of the responsibility if something goes wrong. I feel responsible for bringing the light to the relationship."

Her boyfriend, who wanted to be identified only by his first name, Glenn, is quoted as responding: "OK, but is that bad?"

When I read Glenn's quote, I wanted to fly to Los Angeles, give him a big old heterosexual hug and tell him, quote: "No! It is NOT bad, Glenn! It is NORMAL for women to care way more about emotional/relationship matters than men do, and the fact that a Stanford postdoctoral fellow and the New York Times are just now finding this out after roughly 200,000 years of human social existence does not mean that you, personally, need to feel guilty about it!"

Then Glenn and I would separate awkwardly and never speak again, because that's a lot of words for a manly heterosexual hug. But I believe that they are true words. I may not be a postdoctoral fellow, but I have been a human male since the Truman administration, and I have written a number of published humor columns documenting the differences between the ways men and women think. Here's an excerpt from a column I wrote in 2003 that I think is relevant to the "mankeeping" issue:

A new book has confirmed my theory explaining why men are physically unqualified to do housework. The problem, I have argued, is that men -- because of a tragic genetic flaw -- cannot see dirt until there is enough of it to support agriculture. This puts men at a huge disadvantage against women, who can detect a single dirt molecule 20 feet away.

This is why a man and a woman can both be looking at the same bathroom commode, and the man -- hindered by Male Genetic Dirt Blindness (MGDB) -- will perceive the commode surface as being clean enough for heart surgery; whereas the woman can't even see the commode, only a teeming, commode-shaped swarm of bacteria. A woman can spend two hours cleaning a toothbrush holder and still not be totally satisfied; whereas if you ask a man to clean the entire New York City subway system, he'll go down there with a bottle of Windex and a single paper towel, then emerge 25 minutes later, weary but satisfied with a job well done.

When I wrote about Male Genetic Dirt Blindness, many irate readers complained that I was engaging in sexist stereotyping, as well as making lame excuses for the fact that men are lazy pigs. All of these irate readers belonged to a gender that I will not identify here, other than to say: Guess what, ladies? There is now scientific proof that I was right.

This proof appears in a new book titled "What Could He Be Thinking? How a Man's Mind Really Works.'' I have not personally read this book, because, as a journalist, I am too busy writing about it. But according to an article by Reuters, the book states that a man's brain "takes in less sensory detail than a woman's, so he doesn't see or even feel the dust and household mess in the same way.''

Got that? We can't see or feel the mess! We're like: "What snow tires in the dining room? Oh, THOSE snow tires in the dining room.''

And this is only one of the differences between men's and women's brains. Another difference involves a brain part called the "cingulate gyrus,'' which is where emotions are located. The Reuters article does not describe the cingulate gyrus, but presumably in women it's the size of a mature cantaloupe, containing a vast quantity of complex, endlessly recalibrated emotional data involving hundreds, perhaps thousands of human relationships; whereas in men it's basically a cashew filled with NFL highlights.

In any event, it turns out that women's brains secrete more of the chemicals "oxytocin'' and "serotonin,'' which, according to biologists, cause humans to feel they have an inadequate supply of shoes.

No, seriously, these chemicals cause humans to want to bond with other humans, which is why women like to share their feelings. Some women (and here I'm referring to my wife) can share as many as three days' worth of feelings about an event that took eight seconds to actually happen.

We men, on the other hand, are reluctant to share our feelings, in large part because we often don't have any. Really. Ask any guy: A lot of the time, when we look like we're thinking, we just have this low-level humming sound in our brains. That's why, in male-female conversations, the male part often consists entirely of him going, "Hmmmm.'' This frustrates the woman, who wants to know what he's really thinking. In fact, what he's thinking is, literally, "Hmmmm.''

I stand by that column. As a man who has spent many, many hours in the company of other men in situations where for whatever reason, such as tequila, we felt totally free to express ourselves — to reveal what was really going on, deep down inside us, as men — I believe I am being completely accurate when I say: Not much.

So do we really need "mankeeping?" Does it make sense for women to exhaust themselves to the point of celibacy from bearing the burden of fretting about our feelings when we're not actually having these feelings?

The answer, with all due respect to Stanford University and the New York Times, is: Nah.

Also I have my doubts about the existence of a "male friendship recession." I suspect the issue here might be confusion about the nature of men's friendships vs. women's friendships.

Women treat their friendships like delicate orchids, nourishing them with constant care so they can thrive. Whereas male friendships are more like the organisms described in this article: 250-Million-Year-Old Bacteria Revived in Lab. The article says that university researchers got hold of some bacterial spores that were formed 250 million years ago and were able to revive them, so that the bacteria, after having been dormant for all those years, were able to grow, reproduce and ultimately obtain valid Florida drivers' licenses.

No, that last part is a joke, sort of. But my point is that male friendships are like those hardy bacterial spores: They do not need a lot of tending. They can be ignored, without penalty, for long periods of time, then revived as needed when something urgent arises, with one example being playoff tickets.

So on the surface it would appear that my wife, Michelle, has more friendships than I do, because she regularly communicates with a number — I would estimate somewhere between 35 and 250 — of women, and thus knows a lot of intimate personal details about them such as whether or not they are still alive. I don't have that kind of close relationship with any of my estimated eight male friends. But that doesn't mean I'm in a "friendship recession"; it means my friendships are different.

For example, two of my closest friends are Rob Stavis and Ron Ungerman. Do we talk every day, or even every month? No. When we do talk, do we share our innermost feelings, which as I have noted we do not actually have? Again, no. But what we DO do, every couple of years or so, is travel to Arcola, Ill., for the annual Broom Corn Festival parade, in which we participate as proud members of the World Famous Lawn Rangers, a precision lawnmower-and-broom marching unit. Here's a photo of us posing with our customized show mowers before last year's parade.

From left: Ranger Ungerman, me, Ranger Stavis (Source: Annie Leibovitz)

You may be looking at this photograph and thinking: "Seriously, Dave? You're comparing the relationships your wife has lovingly nurtured with her many friends — the effort she makes day after day, year after year, to keep them in her life, to share their highs and lows and to be there for them whenever they need her — you're comparing that with going to central Illinois roughly every other September with two guys, drinking a bunch of beer and then pushing nonfunctional lawnmowers down the street while wearing idiot cowboy hats?"

For your information, there happens to be more to it than that. We also have to perform precision lawnmower-and-broom maneuvers, sometimes while having to pee pretty bad. Here's an extremely low-quality video of Ranger Stavis and me executing, under actual parade conditions, our most difficult maneuver (we have two) which is known as the "Cross and Toss":

My point, in conclusion, is that men's friendships and women's friendships are different, and just because men's friendships often do not involve communicating with our friends in any way up to and including the time of our death, that does not necessarily mean we're having a "male friendship recession." Also we do not need to be "mankept." This is especially true of us married men, because if our wives could mankeep us, they would definitely start by burning our cowboy hats.

And now it's time for you awesome paying subscribers to express yourselves in the scientific poll and the comments.