2. 外语
  3. Most men live in harness. Richard was one of them. Typically he had no awareness of how his male harness was choking him until h

Most men live in harness. Richard was one of them. Typically he had no awareness of how his male harness was choking him until h

admin2013-10-08  30
问题     Most men live in harness. Richard was one of them. Typically he had no awareness of how his male harness was choking him until his personal and professional life and his body had nearly fallen apart. He had to get sick in his harness and nearly be destroyed by role-playing masculinity before he could allow himself to be a person with his own feelings, rather than just a hollow male image. Had it not been for a bleeding ulcer he might have postponed looking at himself for many years more.
    Like many men, Richard had been a zombie, a daytime sleep-walker. Worse still, he had been a highly "successful" zombie, which made it so difficult for him to risk change. Our culture is saturated with successful male zombies, businessmen zombies, golf zombies, sports car zombies, playboy zombies, etc. They have lost touch with, or are running away from, their feelings and awareness of themselves as people. They have confused their social masks for their essence and they are destroying the selves while fulfilling the traditional definitions of masculine-appropriate behavior. They are the heroes, the providers, the warriors, the empire builders, the fearless ones. Their reality is always approached through these veils of gender expectations.
    Men evaluate each other and are evaluated by many women largely by the degree to which they approximate the ideal masculine model. Women have rightfully lashed out against being placed into a mold. Many women have described their roles in marriage as a form of socially approved prostitution. They assert that they are selling themselves out for an unfulfilling portion of supposed security. For psychologically defensive reasons the male has not yet come to see himself as a prostitute, day in and day out, both in and out of the marriage relationship.
    The male’s inherent survival instincts have been stunted by the seemingly more powerful drive to maintain his masculine image. He would, for example, rather die in the battle than risk living in a different way and being called a "coward" or "not a man". As a recently published study concluded, "A surprising number of men approaching senior citizenship say they would rather die than be buried in retirement."
    The male in our culture is at a growth impasse. He won’t move — not because he is protecting his cherished central place in the sun, but because he can’t move. He is a cardboard Goliath precariously balanced and on the verge of toppling over if he is pushed ever so slightly out of his well-worn path. He lacks the fluidity of the female who can readily move between the traditional definitions of male or female behavior and roles. She can be wife and mother or a business executive. She can dress in typically feminine fashion or adopt the male styles. She will be loved for having "feminine" interests such as needlework or cooking, or she will be admired for sharing with the male in his "masculine" interests. She can be sexually assertive or sexually passive. Meanwhile, the male is rigidly caught in his masculine pose and, in many subtle and indirect ways, he is severely punished when he steps out of it.
    Unlike some of the problems of women, the problems of men are not readily changed through legislation. The male has no apparent and clearly defined targets against which he can vent his rage. Yet he is oppressed by the cultural pressures that have denied him his feelings, by the mythology of the woman and the distorted and self-destructive way he sees and relates to her, and by the urgency for him to "act like a man" which blocks his ability to respond to his inner promptings both emotionally and physiologically, and by a generalized self-hate that causes him to feel comfortable only when he is functioning well in harness.
    Precisely because the tenor and mood of the male liberation efforts so far have been one of self-accusation, self-hate, and a repetition of feminist assertions, I believe it is doomed to failure in its present form. It is buying the myth that the male is culturally favored — a notion that is clung to despite the fact that every critical statistic in the areas of longevity, disease, suicide, crime, accidents, childhood emotional disorders, alcoholism, and drug addiction shows a disproportionately higher male rate.
    The most remarkable and significant aspect of the feminist movement to date has been woman’s daring willingness to own up to her resistances and resentment toward her time-honored, sanctified roles of wife and even mother. The male, however, has yet to fully realize, acknowledge, and rebel against the distress and stifling aspects of many of the roles he plays — from good husband, to good daddy, to good provider, to good lover, etc. Because of the inner pressure to constantly affirm his dominance and masculinity, he continues to act as if he can stand up under, fulfill, and even enjoy all the expectations placed on him no matter how contradictory and devitalizing they are.
    It’s time to remove the disguises of privilege and reveal the male condition for what it really is.
Men are under greater pressure than women in that
选项 A、they don’t have much freedom to make a choice.
B、they are not allowed to make mistakes.
C、they solely shoulder responsibilities for feeding their families.
D、they are self-motivated to achieve great success.
答案A
解析 事实细节题。第五段第二句提到不是男性不想改变，而是他不能改变；第四句讲女性可以在传统定义的或男或女的行为和角色之间转换而男人缺少这种变通性；最后一句指出男人被严格限定在男子汉角色中，如果超出这个范围，就会受到惩罚，综合这些因素可见男人压力大主要是因为没有选择的余地，故答案为[A]。文章没有提到男人不能犯错误，故排除[B]。文中没有提到养家是男人唯一的责任，排除[C]。男性追求成功更多的是出于社会对男性定位的要求，而不是个人对成功的追求，故排除[D]。
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