What it means to be a man in the age of Viagra, metrosexuality and ‘Brokeback Mountain’

We men are a battered lot. We’re confused, bewildered. It may seem that we have all the magazines we need to cater to our admittedly nebulous lifestyles (FHM, GQ, Maxim and other Modern Guy Bibles). It may appear that we have own our tailor-made TV stations and programs (stuff like AXN and Jack TV and The Man Show, which helps us meet our recommended daily intake of fart jokes and images of girls jumping on trampolines). But really, we’re kind of a lost and wandering lot.

Part of it has to do with the way cultural developments are occurring faster than we can define ourselves. What are we supposed to be doing these days? What’s our role in all of this?

Now that women are bringing home substantial bread (and learning to feel resentful about it, just like men), many guys are questioning whether we have any particular turf left that we can call our own.

Some say our only inarguable function in life is providing sperm at various intervals. This seems to be Brad Pitt’s function in life at the moment – this and carrying babies through airports – though admittedly he doesn’t seem to be complaining much about it.

But even here, science has come along to make things all the more clinical. More and more babies are born in vitro, and it may eventually be possible for, say, a lesbian couple to give birth to their own baby – not by cloning, but by fertilizing one of the woman’s eggs with DNA from the other woman’s egg. (Guys can’t help but perk up when they hear this: female-on-female stuff is always hot.)

And just when it seemed that the modern world, or at least much of the First World, had abandoned having babies (finding such a task tended to interfere with other, more important tasks like picking colors for their SUVs and programming their TiVos), along came Viagra.

Now, with the blue pill, couples had fewer and fewer excuses for not having sex – if not having babies.

But, in the way of males addicted to extreme sports, Viagra almost immediately became, not a safe and clinical tool to restore their sex lives, but a party drug. It is not uncommon now to hear of guys in their early twenties hitting up their doctors for a prescription, when they are supposed to be, in the parlance of male sexuality, happily hitting their "sexual peak."

As if guys in their twenties were not sufficiently horny enough, a new pharmaceutical product came along to provide an excuse for them to scale the heights of sexual excess that they had been assured – by the many Paris Hilton, Colin Farrell and Pamela Anderson porn loops available for download viewing – was their Gen-X birth right.

Meanwhile, as sex took a confusing turn into Webcam territory, entering an age in which every dude came to feel, like, totally invisible if he didn’t have a personal sex tape on the Internet, sexuality itself got even more confusing. Metrosexuals rose up out of the muck of male complacency and suddenly announced that our grooming habits were, well, prehistoric.

True, cluelessness about grooming has been a convenient foxhole for men lo these many years. Before, we were never expected to know how to "style" ourselves. The word "pamper" once referred only to disposable diapers, which it was sometimes our job to dispose of.

Now things are different. Suddenly, a whole generation of males is expected to be conversant in fashion, culture and – sweet Jesus – shopping.

I should note here that my bathroom sink – with its abundance of talc powders, hair gels, roll-on deodorants, aftershaves and what women daintily refer to as "moisturizers" – might lead people to conclude that I enjoy shopping for men’s products. I don’t. My wife is kind enough to give them to me. I think she’s trying to tell me something. I think she sees me as a fixer-upper.

I do admit to purchasing one semi-metrosexual device in my US travels, though: it’s an electric nose hair trimmer. It goes round and round and does the work in seconds. For guys, saving time is more important than appearing metrosexual. But I kind of like to keep it out of sight on my bathroom sink, behind the shaving cream and the mouthwash.

With all this going on, it’s not surprising that many men are out seeking more manly pastures – harking back to a way of life that required toughness, masculinity and good old-fashioned camaraderie between men. The kind of lifestyle epitomized by the Old West – or, at least, the Old Westerns.

And then along came Brokeback Mountain to confuse things even more.

Name three guys – three Pinoy guys – of the heterosexual persuasion who will admit to having watched this movie. There is no more surefire way of clearing straight men out of a cinema than to say they’re showing Brokeback Mountain. It’s more effective than yelling "Fire!" in a crowded room. Personally, I thought the movie was okay, and I wouldn’t say any straight dude who watched it was less than manly; but I would be less than honest if I said it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I’m not sure if Brokeback is really some landmark in film history, or just another weepy love story that people will forget in a few years, like Bridges of Madison County. But maybe us guys can learn a lesson from the movie. Like, maybe the world would be a better place if we were all more sensitive towards each other. Something cute like that.

I’m planning to start now, in fact, with my wife, who often says I don’t "share" with her enough. I vow to be more sharing from this point on. She can even use my electric nose hair trimmer, if she wishes.

After all, for us males, politeness will never go out of style.