A friend of mine once read an immensely popular book that claims to disclose secrets about men that every woman should know. As I listened to my friend divulge the book’s “secrets,” I couldn’t help feeling that there isn’t anything secret about its “secrets” and that it’s little more than commonplace drivel about appeasing emotionally disturbed, controlling, and abusive males who just aren’t recognized as such.
I later perused the book and reached the same conclusion as a reviewer who stated succinctly, “If that does describe your relationships, much better advice to you is: Stop hanging out with losers!” Excellent advice, I thought, because a real man isn’t a little boy trapped in a grown man’s body looking for a mother figure. Neither is his highest aspiration to be a “benevolent dictator” or King Kong of his so-called castle. He doesn’t need his ego stroked by subservient women or his alleged manhood validated by engaging in violence.
Indeed, as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
