The ‘Man Code’ — code for fear
In the Chronicle this morning, columnist C.W. Nevius offered his interpretation of the generally sanguine local reaction to the Newsom affair. His verdict was that most women in the area don’t really care, but that men — and I noticed that he exclusively quoted heterosexual men of child-bearing age — were the ones who disapproved, because Newsom’s behavior broke some unspoken “Man Code” — one of the tenets of which, apparently, is that you don’t have sex with your buddy’s wife.
My partner Cris asked me if I’d seen the column. “‘Man Code’!” she scoffed. “Look who’s threatened — men who are afraid their wives and girlfriends will sleep with someone who’s cuter than they are.”
If you look at those who responded to Nevius’ informal poll and those he doesn’t quote, you’d come up with a pretty small minority of people in San Franciscans who are upset with the Mayor. First of all, males make up only 48% of people in the Bay Area. Take out children and gay men, and straight adult men are probably about 50% of all males. Then subtract a few more percentage percentage points for the guys who are nonmonogamous. I think we’re down to 45% of all men, or about 20% of the people in the Bay Area, max. So this allegedly ubiquitous Man Code is actually the ethos of a small minority.
And what does it consist of, according to Nevius and his respondents?
These guys were dead serious. Make no mistake — having an affair with the wife of a trusted male colleague is an irrevocable Man Code violation.
“Hello?” wrote Mike Mulholland, 43, who grew up in the Bay Area before moving to San Diego County. “Newsom slept with his friend’s wife. What if he stole from a friend? Or tried to frame a friend? Would that also be nobody’s business?”
Exactly — sleeping with a friend’s wife is “like stealing.” Or it would be, if the woman was the man’s property, which THE LAST TIME I LOOKED, IS NOT HOW WE THINK OF IT IN THE 21ST CENTURY.
Oh, there are some places where something called “honor” is linked to a sense (or a law) that women are chattel. Places where women are covered from head to foot, places with dowry killings, places where female fetuses are aborted at a much higher rate than male ones. But those places do not resemble the U.S., much less San Francisco. (Update: However, we shouldn’t underestimate the appeal of patriarchy for fundamentalists. Leading evangelical foamer Rod Parsley has called for adultery laws to be revived in 36 states. Read the screed from the wonderfully named Center for Moral Clarity.)
So, sure — we can have a “man code,” albeit an unspoken one, since you know, men don’t talk about it. Or we can relax and let people do what they want. Unless we want our society to be as puritanical as it used to be, oh, three hundred years ago. But then the terrorists win.
Previously on the affair in Metroblog: Kathryn Vercillo and JoAnn.
It’s not about women or men being chattel.. it’s the fact broke his friend’s trust.
But people should be just as pissed at the woman he slept with.. she broke her marriage vows. That’s wrong, too.
But why am I pissed at Gavin? Because I thought he was a great mayor who could really go far politically, and he did the one stupid thing that republicans looove to pounce on. A democratic sex scandal.
It’s not THAT hard to keep it in your pants.
’scoffing’ at mens’ desire not to be cuckolded is about the height of ridiculousness and viciousness - if we were to take it seriously. it’s a good thing we don’t.
the ‘chattel’ excuse is nonsensical, too. dragging out the feminist straw man is just inane. does Gavin banging his boy’s girl have anything to do with feminism? of course, not. AND THE ALL CAPS treatment - that’s just bizarre.
there are issues of feminism and patriarchy that need to be addressed, but this is just not one of them. dragging the big F out here is not only a waste of time, it damages the ability of those of us who are serious about gender equality to argue when real cases of feminism/patriarchy need to be addresses. Instead, we’ll be accused of ‘playing the feminist card’, and we’ll be ignored.
reading this post we’d have to conclude that there is no room to criticize pretty boy because, well, doing so would show one is a _male_ chauvinist pig dedicated to the subjugation of womyn.
monogamy? what’s that? This is sf, dontchaknow. any expectation of such a thing, by any partner in any type of relationship, is just crazy. or so this post would have us believe.
men are upset? men are fearful? good. it’s done wonders for our foreign policy. let’s see what it can do for sf.
every heard anyone say, “…my man…” in reference to their significant other. no? me neither. but if i did, i’d be sure to criticize that guy or girl for being a old school fe/male chauvinist pig for referring to their male significant other in a way that one would address their ‘property’.
redonk.
all due respect, but this is an innane argument and extremely insulting to men. as the others have posted, it’s not about chattel or property or some outdated view of women.
it’s about trust. you don’t sleep with the wife/girlfriend husband/boyfriend of a friend, whether the friend set is man-man, woman-woman or whatever. you just don’t do it, no matter whether you look gavin newsom or danny devito.
Agreed, this post is illogical.
The author interprets the quote from the Chronicle to read “sleeping with a friend’s wife is like stealing”, and from there, he concludes that this is only possible if the wife is the man’s property.
However, there is nothing in the quote from the Chronicle that would logically lead to this conclusion. In the quote, the speaker is conveying the idea that sleeping with a friend’s wife is a breach of trust between the two friends. Such a breach is similar to other breaches of trust, such as stealing or framing that friend for a crime. In other words, sleeping with a friend’s wife and stealing the friend’s property are not synonymous and are not interchangable.
And what exactly is the author suggesting in his last paragraph? It appears that he is presenting two options: 1) follow the so-called Man Code and not sleep with your friend’s wife, or 2) we can do what we want, including, presumably, sleeping with the spouses of friends. The author then appears to suggest that by abstaining from sleeping with wives of friends, one is being “puritanical”. And to illustrate how ridiculous the idea of not sleeping with a friend’s wife is, the author alludes to the ridiculous rhetoric of the Bush administration, grouping the Puritans who do not sleep with friends’ wives with Georgie.
So basically, the author took a silly article from the Chronicle about Gavin’s silly affair, and transformed it, using fallacies and tortured interpretations, to compare a particular “rule” of friendship with murder of women, puritanical beliefs, and worst of all, the Bush administration. Mark, George would be proud.
big ups to Mark for this post. Mark, will you marry me? and be my property to get ’stolen’ by another woman? wait, that would violate the sacred “Woman Code”. would this be applied if our mayor was a woman? no.
seriously, lots of people are asking me to write about this in my column next week in the Chron (including a few people at the paper). but I’m gonna take a pass. why? because it’s *boring*. it’s just sex. were there ball gags, or hot Thai trannies, inflatable sheep, or strap-ons involved? now *that* would be worth some ink. but then, maybe the blow-up ewe wouldn’t violate the Man Code. any way you slice the affair it’s *old news*.
Man Code — what color is that hanky again?
I think there’s a curb your enthusiasm on this very topic. I think it gets the guys off on the idea that there is something forbidden- and it has nothing to do with the woman’s wants/desires, of course. In reality the guys probably just want to do each other, and instad of that they go for wife/goat, etc.
Silly, but classic sf-chron. Losing a world cup, because of calling some guy’s sister a ***.