THE MAN QUESTION: MALE SUBORDINATION AND PRIVILEGE by Nancy E

A man in his twenties approaches the bar. He wears a brown collared shirt. He has a full head of hair. He looks like a normal guy. The room is bustling. A woman is visible in the corner, nursing a bottle of beer. Is she single? This looks like the perfect place for a guy like this. The young man appears puzzled for a moment. He addresses the bartender, “Can I get a light beer?” The bartender, a stunning redheaded woman in a tank top, answers him without hesitation, “Sure. Do you care how it tastes?” A faint smirk lighting up his face, he replies, “No, I don’t care how it tastes.” He’s just a no frills kind of guy, or so it seems. He glances at the woman next to him and lifts his eyebrows to acknowledge her. The bartender’s sculpted countenance suddenly sours, “Ok. Well when you start caring, just take off your skirt and I’ll give you a Miller Lite.” Our young hero is dumbstruck, and, after glancing at the brandless beer that he now holds and the woman at the bar, he beats a hasty retreat. The man is wearing a frilly mini-skirt, the kind of skirt that a teenage girl might wear. Several attractive young female patrons are now in focus and they briefly size him up and look away. He stops and looks longingly back at the bar. He has no retort. He’s no man. He might as well be invisible. “Man Up,” the gravelly voiceover reminds us, “because if you’re drinking a light beer without great pilsner taste, you’re missing the point of drinking beer.” Another young man in a similarly crowded bar. He’s wearing an oxford cloth shirt. Perhaps he just got off work. He looks respectable. He hesitates for a moment, and then, his cadence all confidence, “A light beer, please.”