Boys will be boys

Every girl knows too-creepy-too-forward-guy who doesn't know the difference between flirting and gross disrespect… or pretends not to know for his delight.
 
There was one colleague I once had who brazenly asked another colleague's mother if his workmate (her son) had been circumcised...and he's straight! Why he'd need that information is beyond me.

Friendly or inappropriate?

 I don’t know what dinner table topics he was taught were acceptable but most of us didn't have a Meet the Fockers’ type upbringing. He laughs about that night now but I don’t think he ever learnt his lesson.
 
And we shouldn't be surprised.

Clichés exist because they are repeatedly used. So history tells us that, ‘boys will be boys,’ ‘old habits die hard,’ and that ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,’ which after this week, I’m pretty sure is talking about men and their inherent inability to learn, to
change or to be bettered. I can’t be mad if it’s just in their genetic makeup.  
 
Knowing this should have dictated my actions last week when I honestly approached a boy who I thought was a man about the inappropriateness of his conversation with me. I wasn't China imposing censorship laws against his every word, I was a decent girl speaking to a friend who I thought respected me enough to accept my opinion and was man enough to appreciate my honesty. Despite his intelligence, a mutual appreciation for each other's conversation and an acknowledgement that we enjoyed the challenge that each brought to the friendship, his ego couldn't handle a simple request from me not to be spoken to discourteously. Was this for a love of vulgarity or was he simply too proud to accept that on this one occasion he might have been wrong?

If the situation was reversed, a woman would phone the person, apologise profusely for the indiscretion and vow never to do that wrong thing again. I would at least… but men and their ego’s are no new thing.
 
This week, a man we have loved to hate over the course of the Amazing Race, Chris Pselletes fronted the crowds that hate him in a live interview. Pselletes was labelled an "abusive, hot-headed misogynist." Appearing contrite in a Daily Telegraph interview, he said he was ‘disgusted’ with himself and would work on earning the high opinion of the people around him to prove that he was respectful. (You can read about it here http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/confidential/racers-shame-over-treatment-of-partner/story-e6frf96x-1226073590038 ).  He has a colossal task on his hands.

Although I know I wouldn’t be with a man that spoke to me like that, and Australia thinks his girlfriend Anastasia should take the Amazing Race out of that relationship, at least he grasped the concept that  respect was something earned, not established.
 
My friendship was platonic so neither of us had to fight it out, but this intolerance of being shown up struck me as typically male and I was curious as to why things turned sour when there was a threat to a man’s power?
 
An ‘inferiority complex’ is what most psychologists put this erratic behaviour down to. In 1912, a psychologist by the name of Alfred Alder wrote a book titled The Neurotic Character. His research in this book founded a popular area of psychology known as the inferiority complex which is a term used to describe a sense of inferiority an individual feels about oneself towards other people. It revolves around social status, power, ego, and dominance. You will have an inferiority complex when you feel inferior and think that other people are better than you.

Aha!…Light at the end of the tunnel…Chris yelled because he was unworthy of Anastasia’s forgiveness or partnership on the show and in life. He reacted angrily as a way to assert to himself that he was in control, and in his rage, spiraled out of control instead. Anastasia tolerated the anger, perhaps out of pity, perhaps out of love. Definitely, because she was better than him.

Although I was upset about a strangely sour end to a friendship, I’m not going to fight for someone who refuses to respect me. However, I will delight in the fact that he responded so illogically because he thinks I’m better than him….then proved I was.