Data on Men

Copyright 2004 W. Bruce Cameron — Please do not remove the copyright from this essay

It is part of my professional ethic to make sure that any statistics or other facts cited in my columns be well researched and documented, which is why I generally avoid writing anything that isn’t completely fabricated. However, quite by accident I find myself in possession of factual information which will shock and bore the entire world.

It all started with the realization that my next book project would require a lot of research to assure a quality product, which I took to mean that my next book project would not be a quality product. Research is the refuge of writers too lazy to make up stuff on their own. My book, though, is on an extremely esoteric subject, one I don’t feel qualified to discuss without a lot of study: How to Change Men.

When it comes to men themselves, I’m something of an expert—I have lived among them for years, I speak their language, indeed some of my best friends are men. But this is different: I’m not just writing about males, I’m providing advice on how to alter their behaviors.

You can see the problem here: What is it about men that people would want to change? And by “people,” I mean, of course, “women,” since when I went down to the sports bar and drank beer with my buddies for several hours none of us could come up with a single thing about men that should be changed. (One of my friends suggested calling home and asking their wives, but the idea was nixed when everyone realized they were supposed to be home several hours before.)

The best we could come up with is that often men become so dedicated to completing their mission they lose sight of everything else. Then the football game came on and we sort of lost interest in the topic.

But I realized that I couldn’t just give up, couldn’t just abandon the whole project as being too difficult. Was I really the sort of man to surrender just because I seemed to be facing insurmountable odds? Clearly not; if I did, I would have to return my book advance. But the alternative seemed equally impractical: I would have to expend some effort.

Then I came up with a brilliant idea. The inspiration for it came from my daughter, who said “why don’t you set up a place on your web site for women to write in and tell you what it is about men they would like to see changed?” My idea was this: I would set up a place on my web site for women to write in and tell me what it is about men they would like to see changed!

I reasoned that even if I only received half a dozen ideas, it would be a big help. I put up the form on my web site ( www.wbrucecameron.com) and sat back, hoping I would eventually hear from somebody.

To date, I have received over 3,000 entries.

I sorted these complaints into two categories: those I disagree with, and those I haven’t read yet. And if sheer volume is any indication, we men are in big trouble. Apparently there are somewhere over 3,000 things about us that women would like to see changed. Like this one, which because of a computer glitch wound up in the wrong e-mail in-box, where I accidentally read it as soon as it came in: “Men will put off working on something, letting the problem grow bigger and bigger until it reaches crisis proportions.”

Okay, ha, that’s plainly not true. But I’ll bet some of the other items in the stack are worth reading, and I plan to get to them soon. (I have to, my mailbox is almost full.) In a future column, I’ll write a full analysis of what I find, presenting the data so that men everywhere can learn what it is about themselves they need to change. Armed with this information, we might see a society-wide shift in male behavior, as men take on the extraordinary task of altering themselves in the name of becoming better human beings.

Well, unless the changes are really hard.

Write to Bruce.

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