Let Us Now Praise Awkward Men

Let us now praise awkward men

(Disclaimer: this is more a literary than a scientific text. But the men’s movement may need more literary texts. If you like it, feel free to copy and share it when- and wherever you want.)

What’s wrong with awkward men? Basically that they don’t know how to make themselves attractive to other people. In business-like terms: they don’t know how to market themselves. But is that really a bad thing? Is the whole world supposed to be one big commercial? Should we in these modern times always judge a book by the cover? Doesn’t the non-commercial character of awkward men actually have something charming?

Awkward men don’t have any real evil in them. On one hand, they can’t afford it. To be really evil, one must be able to win people’s sympathy and manipulate them. When you’re not popular anyway, being evil will only lead to terrible loneliness. On the other hand, being awkward partly stems from too much sincere worry about bothering other people too much. Evil people will never worry about that, and certainly not sincerely; at best they will think of opportunistic ways to please others and profit from them.

But awkward men aren’t stupid either. Stupid men are often noisy, rude and irritating, without realising it. Awkward men know very well that they’re awkward, just not how to change it, and that makes them only more awkward. Some awkward men are even highly intelligent. They can think in very complex ways. They realise that not all their ideas will be understood by other people, so they take a lot of trouble to formulate them right; and people will interpret that as lack of spontaneity.

Awkward men are often funny. Sometimes they’re willingly very funny, as a defense against their lack of popularity. Sometimes they’re funny by accident, or mean to be funny one way and turn out to be so in quite another. Even in the latter cases, they mostly benevolently accept the situation, and benevolent people like and don’t shame them for it.

Awkward men do their best. This is the logical outcome of everything said before. As they don’t feel perfectly secure among other people, they decide to show their best side whenever they can, help others, and don’t do things in a careless way. They don’t manage all the time, and sometimes they overdo it, but as a whole they do more good than harm with their actions.

Awkward men are often needy, especially when it comes to love, sex and/or a life partner. This is what makes them hated most. But ‘needy’ is too often associated with too eager, with pavlovian reactions on every supposed chance they get, with clinging to somebody hoping it will be successful, In reality, a needy man can behave exemplary and still make women uncomfortable because they ‘smell’ his neediness. And with all his disadvantages he may make quite a good partner. He will be true, he will be willing to put his weight in the relationship. Hell, even sexually he may be more fun than any impressive hunk (once he has overcome his omnipresent embarassment), because he will be more open to make it good for both partners and communicate about it.

Someone once said that third-wave feminism is a war against awkward men. Whether exaggerated or not, if it’s true, feminism tries to keep women away from some of the best men they can meet in their lives!

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Eisso Post (Edam, Netherlands, 1956) writes short stories and coached beginning authors of all convictions. He also contributed to Janice Fiamengo’s ‘Sons of feminism’. Nowadays he’s mainly the grandfather of two splendid boys.