I hate that term.
It irritates me to no end when guys use that term to describe other guys. And of note, it's only ever guys who do this. No girl ever calls another girl a pansy. And no girl ever calls another guy a pansy. Nope, it's just the boys insulting each other.
"Oh look at that guy carrying that girl's books."
"Oh man, what a pansy."
"Ha ha ha!"
And then they do that annoying thing where they walk by the aforementioned boy and girl and pretend cough/say "pansy" all at the same time?
Gah. It reminds me of all the horrors of high school just picturing it.
Worse yet is when they don't even have that exchange, but rather just walk by and make that whiplash sound. You know what I'm talking about. BBFFFFF-shhhhhhh. The supposed universal sound for, 'dude, where did your manhood go?'
The whiplash sound has thankfully gone the way of frosted tips and boy bands, but today, I was rudely reminded that the thinking behind it is still very much 2010.
All because someone used pansy as a derogatory term.
I dunno if it was a trigger word for terrible high school memories and consequently post-traumatic stress or what, but regardless, my skin started to crawl.
Like I said, I hate that term. I hate the thinking behind it.
Here's why. There is nothing wrong with doing something nice for a girl. There's nothing wrong with cooking a girl dinner or going out of your way to do something for her - especially when you know that she's coming home from a difficult rotation, and you're doing this to be nice. There's nothing wrong with washing the dishes without having to be asked. And there's nothing wrong with having to excuse yourself from dinner to say goodnight to your long-distance girlfriend over the phone. There's nothing wrong with saying I love you in public, where others (gasp!) might hear. There's nothing wrong with holding a girl's books. And there's definitely nothing wrong with being a grown man, standing in line at H&M, holding baby clothes your fiancée wants to buy for your mutual friends.
I find it very hard to believe that any girl would look at that list and think that the boy's balls had been cut off and handed to a girl on a silver platter. And I find it very hard to believe that there's any girl out there who wouldn't appreciate being on the receiving end of anything on that list.
It's called being nice. Being considerate. Showing your affection.
It's NOT being whipped. It's not as though you boys are some untamed beast that needs to be tamed. You wear ties for crying out loud. If that's not a figurative and literal leash, I don't know what is.
The point is this. You've already been tamed. By work, by society, by your mama. Doing nice things for girls isn't emasculating, it's just plain being nice. So don't go disparaging on other guys and their "masculinity" when maybe it's just you who needs to grow up and realize that nice guys do finish first.
Because niceness is always appreciated and rewarded.
