Slave To The Masculine Pendulum

My men have turned into women and my women into men!

Herodotus (484 BC –   425 BC)

Masculinity is going through a social redefinition, as the old “Boys don’t cry” has been finally called out and we’ve opened up our eyes to the damage we’ve caused our boys. Phrases like toxic masculinity have become common place within our everyday language, we’ve realized that maybe we’ve been doing future generations a disservice by placing unhealthy expectation of the world’s men. And so have been born the foundations of a more sensitive masculinity.

And for an instant I’m full of hope for the next generation of men; men sensitive enough to appreciate the world we live in, men with compassion and empathy. Unfortunately, this isn’t what’s happening. The end result has less to do with empathy, sensitivity, and compassion and more to do with conformity, entitlement, and selfishness.

Masculinity, like so many other aspects within our world, has become a pendulum. To stray away from the moral and emotional damage created by the “tough it out” mentality, we’ve embraced the full swing of the now emotionally open “modern masculinity.” The problem being that the pendulum has swung so far that we now have men to soft to deal with a simple reality.

The world isn’t a nice place and will break you if you let it.

Yes, emotional openness is crucial for a healthy life. If you’re unable to appreciate the beauty within our world and understand the emotional intelligence we all posses, there isn’t much left to live for. The problem lies in the fact that we’ve moved from the desensitized extreme to the overly sensitive extreme. We’ve taught men that it’s ok to cry, that it’s ok to ask for help, and that the world should show men more understanding. The problem happens when we, in fear of bringing back the old toxic aspects of masculinity, we won’t teach them to “Man Up,” as we teach them that their emotions matter more than dealing with life. And this wouldn’t be an issue if we didn’t forgot to teach them that life doesn’t stop while you cry your heart out.

Before you get all offended, take a moment to consider the following examples:

A boy puts out his heart for all to see, but the girl’s not interested. 

A young man about to head off to college just found out that he’s going to be a father. 

A business man who’s given his life to his company gets fired due to financial issues out of his control. 

A husband just found out his wife has terminal disease. 

A father is told that his child has a permanent condition that will make the rest of their life more challenging. 

A man dealing with a divorce, with a death, with an illness, with failure, with life in general… 

These are just some of the simple realities of life, the ones that teach you just how unfair it all can be. You can choose to curl up in a ball and break down as you feel sorry for yourself, or you can stand up tough, look at life straight in its eyes, smile, and utter the most empowering words you’ll ever learn.

“Bring it on.”

That girl who’s not interested in you doesn’t owe you her affection, no matter how much that might hurt. That child to be born isn’t going to stop while you decide to grow up emotionally enough to be a dad, no matter how unprepared you might be for that new role. That job you prioritized over your family, the one that defined who you were, showed you that putting your faith on your job will lead to emptiness when it’s gone no matter how much effort you put into it. And most importantly, when life goes into a whirlwind of chaos and those around you need your strength and support, do you really think breaking down emotionally helps in any way? Does self pity? There will be enough time for that afterwards, when you finish dealing with it.

It’s not that we should go back to the emotionally castrated manhood of the past. Nor is the solution what we’ve taught now as we’ve moved into the overly emotional drama full manhood of today. If we want a respectable manhood, we have to create men worth respecting. We need men who are soft enough to embrace their emotions while at the same time strong enough to not become victims of his own heart. Strength and sensitivity aren’t exclusionary. We need to teach boys to be tough enough to deal with life’s challenges, and soft enough to understand that life is worth the effort.

On Manly things

To me the definition of true masculinity - and femininity, too - is being able to lay in your own skin comfortably.

Vincent D'Onofrio

Yesterday I explained how this is a wonderful time to be a man thanks to the ranting havoc created by two groups; those who view masculinity as a problem to modern society and those who view modern society as a problem to masculinity. My original intent in the post was to offer examples of what I meant, but it was already a pretty long entry already. For that reason I feel that we need to do a part deux, one more focused on the practical exposition of how modern masculinity has evolved within our society and how it has exposed the ridiculous attitude of both groups.

There is this retrograde notion that masculinity will either keep you from doing certain actions or that certain actions will hurt your masculinity. In reality, you can do anything you want and still be true to your masculinity. We don’t tell our daughters that taking on challenges traditionally viewed as “manly” will make them lesbians, why the hell do we assume that having our sons take on the challenges traditionally viewed as “womanly” will make them gay? More interesting still is, why do we assume that “gay” is a bad thing or will hurt their masculinity? But more on that last statement later on.

Good Dads aren't born, they're raised.

We need to start breaking these preconceived mentalities and teach our boys about manliness since their childhood. How do we start? Letting them play with dolls or play house if they want to! “But won’t that will make them grow up funny?” Take a second and consider why girls were given baby dolls or given miniature kitchen sets. Those where teaching tools to prepare them to be mothers and home makers. So the worst thing that might happen if a boy plays with baby dolls is … he will learn to be comfortable with take care of a baby and a home. At what point was being a good father and a self-sufficient home owner unmanly?

And speaking about homes, we need to get rid of the notion that the kitchen is the exclusive domain of women. Cooking is about creating, crafting, and forging a meal out of individual elements. Our kitchen becomes our laboratory as we transform simple seeds, grains, and crystallized chemicals into Cupcakes. Cooking is the perfect example of man’s triumph over nature! And if you ever thing about arguing that point, just think of Gordon Ramsay.

Man being Unmanly?

As we speak about our domination over nature, what about our domination over ourselves. That’s what dance is for! Although women might not believe it, men have been traditionally told to be self-conscious about our own bodies, or at least how they can use them. Dance is about learning control over your own limbs, about finding pleasure with what you were given from birth, about letting go while being in control all at the same time. Furthermore, when we look at partner dancing, it’s about knowing how to lead respectfully and caringly, all while making your partner feel safe. Still not finding the wussification in dancing.

Sure, dominating the body is easy, but what about the soul and being in touch with your emotions? “Won’t art, acting, and writing make you lose your masculinity?” If it does, nobody told Hemingway, Paton, Tupac, or Hugh Jackman. I think I covered this to a greater extend here.

Gareth Thomas
Because nothing says
effeminate gay man like Rugby.

“But what about all those effeminate men doing all those womanly things? That’s proof that these things make guys gay.” Let me start with the simple reality, a man’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with his masculinity. We need to step past the media promoted trope of the “flaming queen” or the idea that any gay man being masculine is trying to “act straight.”  Being gay or bi doesn’t make a man any less of a man. If anything, the fact that these gentlemen have been willing to live life in their own terms shows more balls than most of us straight men have.

I’m not saying that men need to be masculine by the simple definition of being a man. What I’m saying is that men can be masculine by choice, and nobody has the right to tell them otherwise. Only when you learn to be comfortable with yourself and your masculinity can you be proud of being a man. 

A Wonderful Time To Be A Man

One cannot always be a hero, but one can always be a man.

Johann Wolfgang

Let me start off today by stating an idea. It’s not a popular one, and people might react as if this article is one made in the form of satire or even irony. Before I state it, let me clarify that I’m being dead serious, and if you find offense from the statement or disagree, at least give me the opportunity to explain the reasoning behind it before dismissing it. What is this statement? It’s the following.

This is a wonderful time for masculinity, manhood, and to be a man!

There, I said it. Let the volatile reactions commence. Why do you thing I would be expecting such an adverse reaction? Because masculinity is currently the topic of choice of two opposing extremes within our society.

One group condemns masculinity as, in their views, manhood only serves to restrict men, not allowing them to do certain things and express certain behavior thanks to its oppressive nature. They assume that men can’t express themselves freely till they break off the chains of toxic masculinity, yet they never define the difference between toxic masculinity and any other kind of masculinity. Any manly interests or expressions are viewed as a result of brainwashing where men are little more than a mindless slave to a social construct. Then again, this group, if allowed to rant on, will blame ALL of society’s ills on masculinity.

The other group fears for masculinity as, in their views, society has made an open declaration of war against anything manly. They rant on about the “wussification” of men as they promote the idea that men should only do manly things. Their construction of masculinity is so frail that anything, especially those things that are traditionally viewed as feminine or “woman’s work,” can serve to make men less of a man. In their eyes, masculinity needs to be labeled and color coded to keep men from turning out “funny.” (Funny=code word used to avoid saying gay and being called a homophobe)

As both of these groups go at each others throats, manhood is caught in the crossfire. And if I would focus on the negative aspects of this debate, I would think that masculinity would end up as a casualty of war, something that one side would celebrate and the other would use as “proof” of the “agenda” the first group has against humanity. Here’s the thing. This isn’t the first time masculinity nor has manhood come under fire. We saw it during the Age of Illumination as cold intelligence an education was thought would destroy the emotionality of masculinity. We saw it during the Age of Industrialization as machines would replace the physical prowess of masculinity. Nietzsche and C.S. Lewis wrote extensively about this, in case you’re interested.

What we are seeing today is just the growing pains of masculinity evolving, as is the rest of society. When you filter out all the ridiculous extremes and absurd conjectures loudly screamed out by both groups, and it’s a lot, you end up with a vision of an amazing new man, a man sure of himself as he finds a balance between the masculine and the feminine side of human nature.

Ironically, this is the way manhood had always been viewed before we hit all the current social bullshit of selective condemnation, convenient blindness, and institutionalized whining. This new man is no longer a slave to either social construct, the one that limited who he is because of masculinity, and the one that limited his masculinity because of who he is.

So let these two groups go at each others throat. You keep being a man who lives in a way that you can be proud of. Don’t let either group make you feel ashamed of who you are. When the smoke clears and we can finally see the empty battlefield, we will notice it wasn’t masculinity that was burned down, but rather the blinders that these two groups hold on so dearly that is gone. 

Constructing A Better ‘Be A Man’

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

Albert Einstein

Last month I ran into a rather interesting video in my social media fee. The people at Cut Video asked boys and men, from age 5 to 50, a simple question; what does it mean to them when someone says “Be a Man?” It’s a rather interesting video where you get reactions from every aspect of the spectrum of opinions. Go ahead to the bottom of the post and watch it before we continue. Don’t worry, I’ll wait till you finish.

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Interesting, right? We see all kind of reactions and comments, from the men inspired and elated about the idea of being a man to men disgusted by the social constructs of manhood and the expectations placed upon them by gender stereotypes. After initially watching it, I was left wondering why we have such diametrical reactions to the idea of ‘Be a Man.’ Why are some men’s reaction so positive, while others so negative?

The easy way out to answer that question would be to take my own perspective as the right one and place judgement on each men; condemning or applauding their answer based on my own opinion, using their reaction to justify my own experience. This being a social media site, that would be easy and every like-minded reader would just follow suit and say that I’m right and anyone who disagrees is wrong. Everyone’s happy, we just trolled the bad guys, and we go on with our happy diluted lives.

Life doesn’t quite work like that. Notice that this attitude doesn’t really answer the question of difference of opinion, but rather becomes self-serving and egotistical. The real question is, why is manhood a positive thing to some and a negative thing to others? The answer is quite simple. Those who have a positive attitude about manhood are because they have dealt with positive examples of manhood. Those who have a negative stance on manhood have usually been at the receiving end of a toxic manhood.

All too often we are bombarded with the idea that manhood IS toxic or that phrases like ‘Man Up’ only serve to perpetuate social constructs. I can’t agree with either mentality for several reasons. I have spoken already about why we need to Stop Not Saying ‘Man Up.’ As for the second one, you are right, manhood IS a social construct, but so is any idea you have about social interaction! Do you think that your vision of how you should handle gender, social justice, or simply everyday interaction isn’t a social construct you have made for yourself?

We all build an idea of what manhood is, usually thanks to our own personal experiences. We do this with EVERY SINGLE CONCEPT. Just ask 20 people to define love. You will probably get just as many definitions, all based on each person’s individual experiences and relationship history. Out of those experiences, each person build a definition and expectations of what ‘love’ is. The same thing happens with Manhood.

So what does this mean to each of us? That you have a double role within your obligations as a Man. The first is to create an ideal worth aspiring. Look and learn from men worthwhile. Look at what empowers you about being a man and what makes great men, well, great. Then work towards that goal.

The second? be the kind of man who inspires others to have a positive image of what Men are. We have enough bad examples out there and enough people attacking manhood, as everyone has met an asshole at one time or another in their lives. Prove them wrong. Become the example a young man needs when wondering how a man of character should behave. Become the example a young woman needs when wondering if all men are the same.

It’s simple. Be a Man and Man Up. Just make sure it’s to become the right kind of man.

I Stand A Proud Man

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

C.S. Lewis

The internet is riddled with articles exposing the damaging effects of manhood’s expectations on men, on the toxic behavior that has been not only condoned but rather promoted, as a boy grows into adulthood. We blame masculinity for all the shortcomings of men today, as we try to break away from the shackles of the oppressive restrictions that men place on themselves due to gender. Yet with all this negative implications placed on men, I am left wondering about all the great men, men who have left a legacy to the world, men who prove just how great men can be. That’s when I have to ask myself, is it manhood that is toxic to men, or are we as a society become toxic to men?

You see, for every time you call out the toxicity of masculinity, I am reminded of men willing to go above and beyond to help others because it’s the right thing to do. For every comment of the chains that hold back men, I am reminded of men whose strength of character has helped make this a better world as they are the first to volunteer to be strong. For every time you tell me I should be ashamed of being a man, I stand proud in the knowledge that being a man is nothing to be ashamed of.

It’s funny how every time a man does good, social media views him as a person or an individual, but when a man does wrong, his actions are a reflection of the potential evil within all men. A good man is special and a bad one is proof that all men are the same? Really? Yes, some men are bad, but it’s not because they are men.

It isn’t manhood that has placed toxic expectations on men, but a society that has bread insecure men who feel they need to prove themselves constantly. We are trying so hard to prove how damaging masculinity that we don’t realize it’s our persecution of masculinity that is hurting men. We are creating our own self-fulfilling prophecy about broken men when it’s our own persecution, negative perspectives, and judgmental attitude that are breaking men.

We need to create men who are sure enough of themselves that they see no reason to prove their manhood. And to do this we need to stop attacking manhood. We need to stop promoting the image of a man as one who works a 9 to 5 job, but one that works 24/7 to better his character. We need to stop promoting the idea that a man needs to be the main financial provider as he needs to make more money than his wife, but rather the idea that money doesn’t define the support he gives to his family. We need to stop measuring manhood with a tape line around his bicep, the length of his penis, or the size of his cojones.

We need to stop telling men that they have to attack masculinity as a way to prove they are not being victimized by it. We need to stop telling men that their own personal faults and flaws are not their responsibility as they can blame them on masculinity. We need men who know that they are responsible for themselves and the kind of man they can be!

But to be this kind of man, to understand this kind of manhood, we need to start looking at what men can do and what manhood offers them. Manhood is what gives your life priorities, as you calmly step away from the narcissism and selfishness of childhood. Manhood is defined by what you are willing to do to take care of your family, your friends, and your community. Manhood is defined by the bond you have with brothers you share no blood with. Manhood is defined by what you are willing to do past your own comfort. Manhood is having personal honor and a moral code that defines your behavior more than any laws of the land. Manhood is having the character to hold yourself accountable for your own actions. Manhood is about trying to be a better man for one simple reason, to be able to face life’s challenges proudly on your feet as a man.