The Truth is Uglier than You Think

“Treat a hot girl like dirt and she’ll stick to you like mud.”

This bit of misogynistic venom spit out by Sam from “Slackers” seems less an explanation for his doin’ dirt to girls than the philosophy of a generation.

Recent romantic comedies—even those that purport to reveal how guys really think—too often justify, even romanticize sexism and misogyny.

It’s alarming how prevalent—check that—how celebrated bad behavior is (and not just in rap songs and man-child movies). It’s even more alarming how many women allow, even expect it.

Listen to how the studio is promoting the romantic comedy “The Ugly Truth.”

The battle of the sexes heats up in Columbia Pictures comedy “The Ugly Truth.” Abby Richter (Katherine Heigl) is a romantically challenged morning show producer whose search for Mr. Perfect has left her hopelessly single. She's in for a rude awakening when her bosses team her with Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler), a hardcore TV personality who promises to spill the ugly truth on what makes men and women tick.

The female character is “romantically challenged” and “hopelessly single,” the male character is “hardcore” and “truth-telling.” Relationships are framed as a battle—or at best a game. The problem with this paradigm is someone has to win and someone has to lose, someone has to dominate and someone has to submit. With the poster picturing the two would-be lovers as the kind of blocky black figures you find on restroom doors with red hearts—the woman’s on her head, the man’s on his crotch, the battle is framed in the ancient way of men only wanting sex and women having to withhold it until the man surrenders to her terms of marriage—or at least until it’s certain he wants more than just her body. In this oppressive and flat out wrong paradigm, men give “love” to get sex and women give sex to get “love”—men are only hounds and women are only virgins or sluts.

Chadway’s ugly truth is that men only want sex—lots and lots of sex. And while I only speak for one man, the problem with the caricatured formulation is that it’s only partially true. Truth is usually far more nuanced, subtle, complex. Many men, maybe most (even us good guy feminist types) want as much sex as we can get, but that’s not the only thing we want. And yet, that is the only thing some guys want from some girls, and the only thing other guys want from all girls.

The real ugly truth is that our culture is so sexist Sam’s and Mike Chadway’s mentalities (and that of the girls they’re involved with) shouldn’t surprise us. And it’s not just them. We have systemic sexism—justified by the powerful, sanctified by the religious, tolerated by all who thoughtlessly accept culture as not only the way things are, but the way things are supposed to be.

The uglier truth is the reason misogynists like Mike Chadway and Sam get so much play is far more a failure of parenting than culture. Succumbing to culture, they’re parents failed them as did the parents of all the girls allowing them to treat them badly. By what they said or didn’t say, by what they did or didn’t do, by what they modeled or by their absence, parents are raising entitled boys to use and abuse, to manipulate and take, and move on, and girls who keep kissing frogs and believing fairytales because they aren’t given the tools to imagine anything else.

Obviously, I found “The Ugly Truth” thought-provoking—but more because of its assumptions than what was on the screen. And though it provided a few laughs and a couple of “moments,” it’s dangerous propaganda.

“Yo, Lister, lighten up. It’s a comedy,” I can hear some readers saying.

And they’d have a point, but sexism, like racism or classism or homophobia or xenophobia, is only funny when being laughed at, not with.

Here are a few of my truths:

—He’s not strong and silent, he’s barbaric and emotionally stunted.

—Drama and sick dynamics don’t equal desire or passion, just dysfunction.

—It’s not just that he’s not that into you, he’s not into anyone but himself.

—There are far far far worse things than being single.

—If a person’s not growing and evolving on his or her own, he or she is not going to do it for you (for very long).

—Character is reality, charm is an illusion.

—If you find self-centeredness sexy, you need counseling.

—There’s a reason it takes several drinks to do what you’re about to do.

—It’s not that women don’t like sex as much as men, it’s that far too many sexual encounters are mostly (if not exclusively) about male satisfaction. (Just because those three minutes were heaven for you doesn’t mean it did anything for her.)

—If being treated badly feels good and being treated good feels bad, your operating system has a virus and needs deprogramming and reprogramming.

Like, “He’s Just Not that Into You,” “The Ugly Truth” claims to be telling truths about men, about how we are really sex-obsessed users (I for one am no user), but then end by reaffirming the sexists suppositions they claim to be exposing. Both films undermine everything they were saying with unearned, incredible happy Hollywood endings.

The guy who’s just not that into you, who keeps giving you all the signs that he only wants sex and not a relationship, realizes by the end of the movie that you’re his soul mate and Mike Chadway is only misogynistic because he has a woman-wounded heart. See, men really do have hearts hidden somewhere behind their enormous erections—all you have to do is persist, keep kissing frogs, keep hoping for the best, keep ignoring the signs and the guy who says he doesn’t want to marry you, eventually will, the guy who says he doesn’t want a relationship will realize he really does. All you have to do is keep playing his game—or the next guy’s game, or the next, or the next and eventually you’ll win. Am I the only one who thinks these are tragedies not comedies?