The end of White Male Privilege: What has the world come to?

There is an episode during the first year of "The Andy Griffith Show" where Ellie, Fred the druggist's niece, is new in town, just come back from pharmacy school in Mount Pilot I suppose.  Andy ends up asking her to the town picnic and dance that weekend and she agrees.  Of course, Andy, more Barney-like in the early seasons, somehow tells himself that he was tricked into asking her out as part of Ellie's devious scheme to get a husband.  He is convinced when Opie comes home with a free ice cream cone given to him by the desperate female.

He tries to throw her off the track by getting eligible bachelors around town to go into the drugstore and flirt with the new female druggist, but Ellie gets wind of Andy's behavior when Opie--it is always Opie--enters and repeats some of Andy's lunatic ravings.  Ellie quickly informs Andy that she wouldn't go to the picnic and dance with him if he were the last person on earth and to prove it she throws herself at the next person to walk through the door--wouldn't you know it--Barney.

It all ends happily.  Ellie and Opie, with Andy acting as chaperone, go to the picnic.  The episode ends there.  One can only wonder what happens after the dance.

I think it was my son Nate who once commented--if it wasn't him, it should have been--that the answers to all the questions in life can be found in "The Andy Griffith Show."  I just saw the above episode for the umpteenth time this morning on Sundance and it has crystallized my thinking on sexual politics.

Andy's attitude, while exaggerated, is kind of a cultural norm.  Men are full of themselves.  They can be shy and bumbling, the little dears, but eventually they'll act like assholes.  Women, at least the ones we are bombarded with on situation comedies, usually end up in control of the relationship and make their male halves look like bumbling morons.  But the thing is that this woman-in-control thing is always portrayed ironically.  As if to say, we all know that it is the man who is in charge, but wouldn't it be funny if it were the other way around?  Some joke.

Look at the difference in how we talk about acting out sexually.  Before the recent storm of sexual allegations--every "famous" man in America must be looking over his shoulder--male sexual predators were called leches, ladies' men, wolves, cocksmen, sugar daddies, babe magnets, studs, etc. Besides the term rapist, I can't think of a single term for a male sexual athlete that has a negative connotation  What do we call women who act out sexually, either for real or in our male imagination?  Slut.  Whore.  Hot for It.  Gagging for It.  Hot to trot.  Ho.  Easy.  Nympho.  I cannot think of a single word to describe this behavior with a positive connotation.

Definitions belong to the conquerers and it is pretty obvious who is doing the defining in this situation.

But it looks like things are changing.  "Me too" is starting to do a little defining of its own and that has only added to the rash of bad years old white males, the ones in my demographic, are having.  It appears at first glance that white males have regained their precious supremacy, at least for a little while.  But that doesn't change the fact that for a long time now, white males have been noticing the steady erosion of their power.  Long time neighborhoods have been changing their complexion.  It won't be long before whites are in the minority.  They already are in some areas.  (You can tell which because those are the areas that have been the most heavily gerrymandered.)  There are gay people on television!  There are lesbians getting married!  A black family occupied The White House!  A woman had the temerity to run for president!  Worse than that, women have the vote!  And as a final insult, it looks like women want to be equal sexually as well.  It is one more entitlement being stripped away from white male privilege and it is scaring the shit out of them.

Those poor white guys, embodied by our President, are discovering (well some are) that they can't talk the same way they used to.  They can't act the same way.  And if they want to get along, they can't even think the same way.  Trump's crotch grabbing braggadocio secured him a lot of votes.  Old white guys who tend to vote for all things Trump think that's the way you're supposed to talk.  To see a beautiful woman in front of you on the golf course and to comment that there is nothing better than great pussy is what a man's man is supposed to do.  I'll bet John Wayne said stuff like that all the time.  And if Rock Hudson hadn't been gay he would have probably said the same thing.  But now, if you are a member of the fake news media, you get fired for saying, thinking, or doing such things.  Of course, if you are a Republican running for office, you get elected.

What has the world come to?