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Masculinity Crisis

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There is a small Canadian company that regularly brings all of its employees on all-expenses-paid trips to beautiful overseas locations. You get to stay at a villa with a swimming pool, your own bedroom, your own bathroom, and you don’t get to spend a dime. On top of getting all of the expenses covered by the company, you get paid as if you were on a regular workday. It’s a dream job.

This year, the company retreat is in Greece. Everybody is going except for one male Canadian worker. He isn’t going because his wife doesn’t allow him. She doesn’t like it when he’s away from her.

Bonus points for guessing which country the wife is from. But the point is that this is a male employee. Female employees are all going. The patriarchy has truly been vanquished, but not in a good way.

44 responses to “Masculinity Crisis”

  1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
    oldcowboy3

    Am I the only one wondering why spouses would not be included?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Because it’s double the cost and a huge loss of productivity. If the company is paying, it expects people to work.

      Besides, why would a worker want to bring a spouse into a working retreat? I hate it when male academics bring their wives to conferences. We have to switch into a language that she will understand. We can’t talk about anything work-related because she feels excluded. It’s torture.

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
        oldcowboy3

        Clearly different situations, our employees lmost always spent much of the time in isolated areas far from family. So naturally, other than perhaps disorganized drinks after work, company holiday parties always included long suffering and much appreciated spouses.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          This is not a party, though. It’s a working retreat. I feel like people have never encountered this. In my work-related life, this is such a frequent and normal thing that maybe I should have explained it better and not expected people to know what this is.

          Liked by 1 person

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  2. ed Avatar
    ed

    Honestly, this type of vacation seems so weird to me. Like you already spend so much time with these people at work, why increase that time to also include vacation time that you’re basically spending away from your family? I find it weird to go on international vacations with co-workers. Like is the end goal to make co-workers close friends too? What’s the big objective with these things?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      It’s not a vacation. It’s a workday retreat. This is a standard thing in workplace environments. We have these yearly retreats at my university for department chairs, for example. Obviously, nobody has the money to send us to Greece, but the university rents a nice space away from campus. We all go there together to spend the day working and doing all sorts of activities.

      It’s a work event that the company does for workers, like going to a conference. When I go to a conference, I’m considered to be at work. I’m paid for a standard workday. The university covers all of the expenses for me, but obviously not for my family members.

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      1. ed Avatar
        ed

        That makes a little more sense. But what is the need to sending you away from campus to do work? Like what is the objective of what? Like if you go to a conference or business conference you go there to talk to other people from other universities or businesses. Why couldn’t this be done at the university if it’s all colleagues that go to the same place?

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          It breaks up the monotony. It helps people step away from the usual environment. You feel refreshed and more energetic. Original ideas come with greater ease when you do something unusual.

          This works in little things too. I was stuck in the article I’m writing, so I changed the face on my Samsung Watch and sat on the other side of my desk. This helped me break through the place where I was stuck.

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          1. ed Avatar
            ed

            I totally understand spending a day working elsewhere. The part that I find weird is to spend several days away on a vacation-like setting with a bunch of co-workers.

            But maybe that’s just me, I like to separate my work life from my leisure time. Ultimately, I also fail to see what this has to do with masculinity. This practice (multi-day vacation-like retreats) is certainly not something that’s common around my neck of the woods and I can totally see why someone would be uncomfortable with a spouse going on such an international trip for no other reason than to spend more time with co-workers than you already spend during work hours.

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            1. cliff arroyo Avatar
              cliff arroyo

              “part that I find weird is to spend several days away on a vacation-like setting with a bunch of co-workers”

              Yeah… I mean you’re talking 9 to 10 hours on airplanes to get there, minimum, and then, in a beautiful new environment…. work for a few days before the long haul home… seems like going around your ass to get to your elbow (as my mother used to say).

              I’m going to Greece myself around the end of the month (after considering Spain and Croatia) and plan on working not at all…

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              1. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                You know the modern workplace. Everybody works remotely from different countries. Some of the workers are in Ukraine.

                Why is nobody trying to guess where the wife is from, which I thought was the most interesting part of the post. Not from Ukraine, that’s for sure.

                Liked by 1 person

            2. cliff arroyo Avatar
              cliff arroyo

              “fail to see what this has to do with masculinity”

              The point is the guy who’s not going because his wife is too controlling…

              “guessing which country the wife is from”

              Mate-guarding behavior(which is what this sounds like) is fairly universal…. so no country would surprise me.

              Liked by 1 person

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              1. ed Avatar
                ed

                “Mate-guarding behavior(which is what this sounds like) is fairly universal…. so no country would surprise me.”

                Agree. It could be any nationality.

                This could also be more generational thing than gender. Millennials and younger tend to have much stronger work/life boundaries.

                Liked by 1 person

              2. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                Yes, the wife! I have no idea how people don’t find this story shocking.

                When after 17 years of blogging I have to idea what will pop and what won’t. I thought I had a killer story here but it’s tragically failing to land.

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  3. bluebird of bitterness Avatar
    bluebird of bitterness

    I’m curious to know the woman’s nationality, but I’m more interested in knowing why she doesn’t want her husband to go on the trip. Will there be lots of good-looking women in the group, perhaps some who are better looking than the wife, maybe one or two who have a reputation for poaching other women’s husbands? Has the husband ever given his wife reason to distrust him when he’s out of her sight? Or is she just being a bitch?

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    1. v07 Avatar
      v07

      There may be a lot of reasons a wife may not want him to go that are even more benign – like him being needed at home to take care of the kids while the wife has some professionally-important activity.

      Was “my wife does not let me” his words or your interpretation or the company boss’s interpretation?

      Maybe he is not fond of long flights and jetlag but is unable to admit it because that would be against company culture.

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        Perhaps it is a weird thing to do, but… my husband works in a majority-female profession. He’s also, like me, not a very social person. It’s not unusual for coworkers to invite him (along with the rest of the department) to social events. I’ve attended one with him, just to be a good sport. But… he mostly begs off. These types of things are profoundly uncomfortable for us. I have given him carte blanche to use me as an excuse for getting out of work-adjacent social events he does not want to attend, in whatever way seems most suitable. He can’t lie, but I can come up with a conflicting schedule item on short notice 😉

        We can’t be the only ones.

        Liked by 2 people

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Thank you for asking. The wife is Chinese. And yes, there will be very attractive women. However, if the husband wants to cheat, he doesn’t need to slub all the way over to Greece. As the famous quote from a movie goes, “It’s a 15-minute business.” You can squeeze it in during your regular life if you are inclined to do so.

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      1. bluebird of bitterness Avatar
        bluebird of bitterness

        Point taken.

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      2. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “The wife is Chinese”

        Years ago I remember reading an article about guys who married East Asian mail order brides because they wanted a ‘traditional’ wife and found themselves after the wedding in a prison camp with the wife as the supreme Kommendant who did not understand any need for any kind of privacy at all…

        Chinese wives have a bad reputation that way but from what I understand Japanese wives are even more… formidable. In Japan husbands hand over their entire salaries and get allowances back from their wives.

        Different strokes…

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  4. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “after 17 years of blogging I have to idea what will pop and what won’t”

    My first thought was that the wife was East Asian (notorious for keeping husbands on a short leash).

    But given your… investment in the story I’m going to say russian.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Russian women are stupid victims. They’d never.

      People are saying that maybe the husband invented the story about the wife as an excuse, but that confirms my point about masculinity even more. What kind of a guy comes up with such a story when it’s completely emasculating?

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      1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
        oldcowboy3

        “What kind of a guy comes up with such a story when it’s completely emasculating?”

        Kid, do you really not grasp the result of the multi-generational over-feminization of academia, particularly within the humanities, and most especially within languages and literature? The reason that you have male professors publicly weeping is because weakness has been selected for bloody years. And that is not a “killer story” so much as an ungoing attic tragedy ;-D

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I’m bothered by this “liberal white women” thing. Have you met liberal black women? Or liberal Indian women? They are even worse! Why is it always the whitey that is singled out?

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          1. cliff arroyo Avatar
            cliff arroyo

            “Why is it always the whitey that is singled out?”

            It’s safer. No one gets upset at rhetorical attacks against whites (or often enough, physical attacks). Criticize a non-white person and you’re opening yourself up to being called ‘racist’ which is the worst thing ever for many people.

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          2. Avi Avatar
            Avi

            I, like Cliff, also thought the wife would be Russian. The Russian women I meet in my parish church tend to be of the strong-arming powerful sort if they are married to a non-Russian man.

            As for the Liberal White Women trope, the reason is that it is not contradictory for a Black, Asian or any non-White liberal woman to be in the fight against “Whiteness”, but if you’re White you really must be an idiot if you want to see the erasure of Western European civilisation. And Liberal White Women tend to be among the most vociferous and most vicious of all anti-Whiteness people.

            I would even say that while “Whiteness” as a crazy Woke notion was invented by rabid people of colour, Black, Brown and all shades in between, the anti-Whiteness crusade was invented and used to be led mainly by Liberal White Women.

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            1. cliff arroyo Avatar
              cliff arroyo

              “like Cliff, also thought the wife would be Russian”

              My first thought was East Asian… but yeah, ime russian women who snare western guys do tend to overpower and bully them.

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            2. oldcowboy3 Avatar
              oldcowboy3

              Agreed, and I really should have used AWFL, or even a Karen ;-D

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            3. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              It bothers me that even non-woke white people use the word “white” as an insult. I understand the reasoning but I strongly believe we should quit it cold.

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          3. oldcowboy3 Avatar
            oldcowboy3

            Kid, men measure, this is a matter of percentages. Frankly, I doubt there was ever a need for any female affirmative action in your field during your entire working life. The ethnicities within the herd is of less importance than the gender of those agreeing to place their fat female fingers on the scales of justice, so never mind any diversionary tactics. And besides who knows, adding a few gravelly baritone tones might be a pleasant change in meetings, and a deep bass, well… ;-D

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  5. lauratfrey Avatar
    lauratfrey

    Maybe the story isn’t landing because with “bonus points for guessing which country” it feels like an excuse to bait people into making racist comments. That said, I am familiar with the concept of company retreats, though it feels like this kind of thing is less and less common. I’m a public servant so I certainly don’t get these opportunities. I would find it odd if someone has the opportunity to do this and wasn’t “allowed” regardless of gender and depending on how well I knew them, might think it was funny (as in they are “whipped”) or concerning (as in maybe their spouse is abusive).

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  6. Occasional Reader Avatar
    Occasional Reader

    I just find the whole set up odd. Usually, when people travel for work (conferences, client meetings etc), the point is to connect with people from *outside* your work. Sometimes delegations from the workplace travel together but the point is to connect with people your normally *don’t* see.

    But you arent really describing that sort of model at all. You are describing a retreat model of work– where you travel with people *from* your work. And I know people whose job includes that sort of annual retreat structure….usually in a beautiful /exotic location. But spouses and families are without fail, invited to and *part* of the retreat. They have children’s activities organized, events for the spouses, large group dinners. The retreats create space for employees to work and get recharged/energized but retreats are also about getting family members excited about the work and seeing employees “whole selves” etc etc. Not for me but a certain type of employee/ company thrives in these retreat environments.

    But this structure….where you travel internationally and *only* see people from work while spouses are expected to stay behind? Its so odd. I would do anything I could to get out of it. I would guess that this guy just doesn’t want to go but doesn’t want to tell that to his boss. And somebody really needs to tell the boss what a bizarre idea this is. Seems like its being offered with the best of intentions but in reality it is a huge claim on an employees personal time.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      As I said, these are people who are all in different countries. Several of them are in Ukraine. Everybody works remotely.

      Nobody sits in the same office together. That type of workplace is fast fading away.

      As for inviting spouses and children, can you imagine the amount of money that would cost? I’m talking about a small business with 12 employees.

      What you are describing, the activities to get the wives excited, the whole selves, the work-life balance, that’s a boomer workplace. What I’m describing is a different thing, generationally. We don’t have all-male workplaces that much any longer. There is no generation of non-working champagne moms who need to be entertained while the husbands work. You say “spouses,” but you clearly mean wives. Men won’t go because they have jobs of their own. Plus, they would not enjoy sitting in the back room waiting for the wife to finish her important work.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “Nobody sits in the same office together. That type of workplace is fast fading away”

        So part of the reason for the getaways is for employees to have some in-person contact? Saying that at first would have saved a lot of confusion.

        I, for one, don’t especially welcome the rise of mas stay-at-home remote work… it’s kind of a return to cottage industry which makes it easier for larger employers to exploit employees. IIRC the rise of centralized-workplaces gave workers a chance to compare notes and organize… which was a good thing.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          This is in Canada. Buying commercial real estate is impossible unless you are a billionaire. I know for a fact because my sister was trying to buy an office for her company and it’s simply impossible even with a 40% down payment and 4 different kinds of collateral.

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            And I didn’t mention any of this from the start because it’s not the point of my post. The point I was making is that an adult man thinks it’s a normal thing to do to tell his employer that his wife is not allowing him to travel. Whether that is true or not is unimportant. What matters is that this man completely lost any understanding of manliness and openly positions himself as a little boy controlled by his wife.

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            1. cliff arroyo Avatar
              cliff arroyo

              “I didn’t mention any of this from the start because it’s not the point of my post”

              This is where ‘theory of mind’ is helpful. Readers didn’t know any of the background and so they latched on to other things.

              And it was not clear that the wife wasn’t ‘allowing’ the man to travel just expressing her wish that he not do so (which absent all the other information didn’t seem that weird).

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              1. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                Honestly, I don’t understand what objections people could have to this kind of a job. I think it’s the ideal job. I love being an academic, but it’s lonely, even for me.

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      As I said, these are people who are all in different countries. Several of them are in Ukraine. Everybody works remotely.

      Nobody sits in the same office together. That type of workplace is fast fading away.

      As for inviting spouses and children, can you imagine the amount of money that would cost? I’m talking about a small business with 12 employees.

      What you are describing, the activities to get the wives excited, the whole selves, the work-life balance, that’s a boomer workplace. What I’m describing is a different thing, generationally. We don’t have all-male workplaces that much any longer. There is no generation of non-working champagne moms who need to be entertained while the husbands work. You say “spouses,” but you clearly mean wives. Men won’t go because they have jobs of their own. Plus, they would not enjoy sitting in the back room waiting for the wife to finish her important work.

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  7. v07 Avatar
    v07

    If she is Chinese then I believe it. But he is one of the people from the main Canadian office. So for him this retreat does involve travelling with people he sees every day, including the boss.

    I personally would not like this kind of a retreat, but even if I had to lie to get out of it I would not literally say “my wife does not allow me”. Because it is just not adult.

    Anyway, literally “my spouse does not allow me” can be interpreted in only two ways. In the first case, if it is not true, it is equally unprofessional and not-adult from either a man or a woman. (So it is not something shameful only for a man, it is equally shameful for a woman.) Or it is true in which case we are dealing with abuse. There is a show called “couples therapy”. I have not seen the whole show because I am not subscribed to whatever platform it is on. But there are a lot of pieces on Youtube. The woman’s name is Ping, this should be enough info to google it.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      No, they are in different cities.

      How can people not be into something like this? It’s my definition of paradise, this kind of a job. I even liked our Chairs retreats until they got hijacked by BLMers. And those weren’t in Greece but in a neighboring town.

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      1. v07 Avatar
        v07

        Sorry, I assumed that if it is a small company of 12 people, some of whom are in different countries, but he is a Canadian, then he should be in the main office.

        Let me put it in a different way: so he had to travel to the airport, fly from Canada to Greece (not all Canadian cities have direct flights to Greece, so maybe some layover was also involved) then travel in Greece from the airport to wherever that beautiful villa was. Which could take up to 24 hours total. And then the same amount of time on the way back. Does the boss pay them overtime at triple the rate for the time of travel (assuming 8 hours normal work day)? And, technically, being trapped with your coworkers 24 hours a day is not the same as spending 8 hours a day with them and then doing whatever one wants (or needs) to do.

        —How can people not be into something like this? It’s my definition of paradise…

        I do not question good intentions of the boss, only their ability to put themselves in the shoes of people that are different.

        And comparisons with conferences are not correct. Not only do we go to conferences to see people we normally do not see. We also decide which conferences we go to, we do not have a boss that sends us there.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Nobody pays me overtime at triple the rate of anything when I go to a conference. There’s a modest pet diem and of course I always end up significantly out of pocket. It’s of course worth it but it’s honestly like people live in a different reality. You get to go to Greece for free! It’s an amazing thing. Ooh, he has to travel to an airport. What if he melts from the exertion?

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          1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
            oldcowboy3

            LOL, Kid, you have to remember that this is a varied, rather eclectic group ;-D

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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