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

admin2017-04-20  61
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 themselves 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.
The best title for the passage would be________.
选项 A、Different Roles of Men and Women
B、How to Solve Men’s Problems
C、In Harness: the Male Condition
D、Survival Instincts vs. Male Images
答案C
解析 主旨题。文章首句指出“Most men live in harness”，之后以Richard为例，指出现代社会中男性的生活状况。文中反复出现了“in harness”这个短语，将男人背负“男子汉”传统形象的压力、拼命工作的情景栩栩如生地表现出来，故答案为[C]。[A]只是文章提到的部分内容，故排除；[B]含义笼统，故排除；生存本能和男性形象是文中提到的内容，但与全文大意相去甚远，故排除[D]。
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