This resentment has born in men a spirit of negation that sharply characterizes contemporary masculinity. In the effort to secure their own sense of turf, and to prove that there are still manly qualities by which men can compare themselves with each other, the Cult of the Slob has developed. This premise, upon which 90 percent of television sitcoms are based, is that men are uncultured boorish louts and that women are forced to love them anyway because at least these smelly curs are better than the available alternatives. Men today revel in their lack of manners, their inability to pick out their own clothes without the help of a maternal woman, their incomprehension of interior decorating, and their utter dread of being dragged to the opera. Manners, taste and style are things for women.
Men prefer football, beer and breaking wind.
We need only look at our contemporary film icons to see the war against refinement. Polished, elegantly dressed, a connoisseur of food and wine, well-mannered and charming, Bond is the last dashing action hero, whose lineage goes back to Valentino and Erroll Flynn. And it is no coincidence that he was created before the modern women's movement and that he is British. Thus while an upper-class Victorian bachelor, because he lived in a patriarchal society, could have taken care in his dress, chosen fresh flowers for his apartment, collected fine China and gone to the ballet without any question of his manhood, today's cultured sophisticate faces constant scrutiny of his sexuality if he exhibits the same qualities. In the effort to differentiate themselves from the heterosexual majority, many gays create a cult of exquisite taste, high fashions and high manners that trumps the boorish notion of manhood sustained by the dominant heterosexual middle-class.