ABOUT MEN
Don't women give a Hooters about chauvinism, anymore?

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer

Male chauvinist pigs are making a comeback. And it seems like they're doing it with a wink and a nod from the most unlikely of supporters: women.

Just about everywhere you look these days, male sexism seems to be on the rise. Whether it's in the locker room or on cable television, it suddenly seems fashionable to flaunt old-fashioned, boorish male behavior.

What's worse, a lot of women seem eager to play the role of enablers, all in the name of a good laugh. Here is just some of the evidence:

• The Comedy Channel's "Man Show," which touts itself as "a half-hour of joyous chauvinism," includes a troupe of women known as the "juggies" and a regular feature called "Women on Trampolines."
• Hooters still thrives at Aloha Tower Market Place while a lot of better restaurants have come and gone.
• Most of the newly popular reality TV shows, including "The Bachelor" and "Joe Millionaire," are based on the mildly misogynous premise that an all-powerful man gets to eliminate willing women one by one.
• A local radio station treated listeners the other day to a contest in which the winner could be heard massaging the DJ's bald head with her breasts in return for a couple of tickets to an upcoming concert while a female disc jockey cheered her on.
• There are hundreds of Web sites devoted to the crudest of women-bashing jokes, many of them offered by women themselves.

Offensive? You bet.

A few years ago, any or all of these developments would have been open targets for women of a certain generation.

Today, such actions seem passively accepted for what they claim to be — a bit of in-the-know satire. After all, men are going to be men, right? If they're going to scratch themselves in public, why not shine a light on them and film the moment so everyone can chuckle?

Some of us who came of age during the feminist movement, though, don't seem to get the joke. We're more likely to cringe than grin.

We took the messages of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan to our hearts, and thought we were growing along with the world's consciousness. We learned (at least, we hope we learned) a new way of behavior.

Now we're being told to lighten up. Who are we to tell women that they can't be every bit as bumptious as men? Why shouldn't women play along with the cosmic gag? Isn't that what the feminist movement was all about anyway — creating an equality that was just as valid in the bedroom as the barroom, if not the board room?

We're told that we don't understand today's dynamics. If women want to go along with the joke, isn't that the right they earned in their mother's generation?

Still, there are millions of women in a lot of places in the world — Iran, Nigeria and the thousands of American households where sexual abuse is still a daily occurrence come to mind right away — where true sexism is a terrible thing.

I bet they don't get the joke, either.

Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.