In Camile Peri’s fascinating new book A Wilder Shore, the story of Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife, Fanny, Robinson talks much about how he loved talking and arguing with other men and sometimes with women.
Often, when women dropped by for social visits, he yearned for the deep bonds of male camaraderie. This was not the time for polite drawing-room conversation, he would write in his essay, ‘Talk and Talkers.’
When dangerous topics came out, women were smuggled out of the room until they could be “reintroduced with safety in an altered shape,” and discussion between the sexes smoldered at each point when it caught fire among men.
In his essay, Stevenson didn’t blame the phenomenon on women but on the societal norms that dictated their behavior—their conditioning from birth to please and tolerate the ‘infantile vanity’ of men.
The female social arts, he wrote, ‘were the arts of a civilized slave among good-natured barbarians.’ He wrote, Outside the drawing room, and especially in marriage, ‘men had much to learn from women.’
These passages struck home. (He talked plenty with Fanny.)
At most family dinners during my youth, I noticed that men got up after dinner and went to the living room to smoke and talk while women stayed beyond to speak and do the dishes.
It was when I married Maria, and during my first marriage, that I noticed that men and women now stayed behind to talk to one another – women didn’t put up with being diminished in that way any longer.
My marriage with Maria has none of that, yet I often notice the difference between men and women when they talk at the dinner table. And many men still get up and speak with the other guys.
Men only say a little if it’s about sports, politics, or the cost of things, and women often seem distant and sometimes shy about jumping in. The Boomers were obsessed with their children. So are the Millenials.
Male talk is rougher, more argumentative, and overpowering than the women they are with. Women ask each other about their personal lives; I don’t remember a man eating dinner even asking me a single question about my personal life.
Some men I know don’t speak at all during dinner when their wives are present. Sometimes the reverse is true, but it’s rarely easy.
I often felt there was and is something of the infantile vanity Stevenson talked about with men, the “flush cheeked bluster, the amicable combativeness, the “racy flesh-pots” of conversation between men that is difficult for women to penetrate.
In recent years, I have learned a lot from women; many are in stronger positions in their work, ambitions, and conversations. But I rarely feel men talking as easily or openly. When a man comes to dinner, I see the effect on everyone in the room. It often just tightens up.
Many men don’t relax around me, and I usually don’t feel at ease around them. There is a hulking feeling of danger when men are around, at least in my mind; there will likely be trouble or ugly arguments.
Few show the slightest interest in me or my life.
My wives have been powerful women and have had plenty to say.
My daughter has, too. In recent years, I have learned to ask them questions about themselves. And to listen. I’ve always struggled with sports and am wary of discussing politics with anyone.
No man I know wants to talk about the things I’d love to talk about. That might be because it’s me, but it’s more complicated than that.
My best conversations are with women now, not men. They are curious about me and ask me how and what I am doing—men rarely do that. Women project strength to me yet are not afraid of appearing vulnerable.
In recent years, my closest friends have been women.
From them, I have learned that vulnerability is an act of authenticity and connection, not a sign of weakness. Very few men I know will ever acknowledge being vulnerable, so it is difficult for me to feel connected to them.
When women were hustled out of those dinner conversations, I suspect they learned to do something men have yet to know – how to talk to each other.
Our political ugliness reinforces this message to men. Women are fair game; you can say almost anything about them and get away with it.
So much of the name-calling and blustering is classic male. Kamala Harris is forever challenged to be tough enough to show that infant vanity that even the “good-natured barbarians” show in public.
I sometimes think the campaign – no matter who you like – is a kind of undeclared civil war between angry and disenchanted white people and the rest of the world. Lincoln once said that the Civil War would never really end, not for centuries.
We have a friend who wanted us to meet her husband; she was sure we would like it. She set up a lunch.
We did not like him. He was a rude and ignorant boor, and we both left the meal wondering why on earth she wanted us to meet him. Clearly, he didn’t like us any more than we liked him. I doubt we will ever see him again.
But he came right out of Stevenson’s lament. He was a man who had no idea how to talk, listen, share a single meaningful thought about his life, or show any interest in ours.
Men have a lot to learn from women.
Whatever else comes out of the nearly insane political polling, ranging, and arguing, I’m reminded that men have a long way to go. It’s still okay – even to many women – to call them stupid and ugly and overly burdensome and too butch if they are tough.
Women have taught me not only how to talk but how to listen. Maria would not have it any other way, and now, neither would I. I had no choice but to learn and no desire to fail. I remember those men getting up from the table to spare the women “real conversation” about the world.
I never want to be one of them.
In retrospect, the women were lucky; when I got older, I went out to the living rooms with the men. I can’t remember a single word or thought from any of it. I remember my favorite Uncle, Harry, getting up to tell my father that he was full of it and storming out. He was my hero.
At least the women had fresh gossip and lots of secrets.
One of Stevenson’s closest friends, Edmund Gosse, was described as “having a crystal wit” so polished that the dull didn’t get it, but so correct that the sensitive was silence.”
Stevenson loved him for it.
“The best talk,” said Grosse, “between spiritual brothers – was as deep as love in the constitution of our being.”
Reading this, I had this sad hope that I might experience that in my lifetime from anyone other than my wife, with whom I am spiritually bound.
I have to be honest. I doubt it. Men have a lot to learn from women when they get over trying to dominate them.
