I’ve been away from the keyboard for the better part of the past two weeks as the final stretch of getting married and moving into my first home rounded the corner this past weekend, so I’m pretty out of the loop as far as political/cultural on goings are concerned. Engaging in this whole process has been, for obvious reasons, incredibly rewarding, but it has also been a fascinating first person psychological ride that I have great faith will bear valuable fruits both in the immediate future and down the road.
I don’t know if the process of getting married and buying your first home is like this for everyone who passes through those gates, but I’ve found that a lot of my personal demons and shadows have come out of the woodwork to endure their time in the sun and account for their hurt/anger/resentment/sins. I went through something of a condensed and intensive romantic crisis early last week through which my very good friend Chris Dierkes was kind enough to counsel me via email. The nature of the crisis had nothing directly to do with my now wife or impending marriage so much as it had to do with a whole host of insecurities and unlearned lessons from past failures choosing to rear their ugly heads as I counted down to one of the most significant commitments I will ever make.
Having mostly past through the fulcrum of that expurgation (I had another whopper of a dream last night that played on similar, but slightly different themes that previously brought me to near paralysis), I found next in line a whole host of familial related sink holes that awaited my attention throughout the weekend. I literally broke down sobbing in the car last night as we drove home, overcome with the searing weight of some of the twisted truths I was speaking aloud for the first time to the person I trust most in this world. Truths (at least for me) about the death of my father when I was nine, about my relationship to my mother, to my brother, my own sense of self-worth, and the murky genesis of the grinding achiever ambition I drag around with me over which I had puzzled only weeks prior.
I have come to the conclusion that weddings done right are highly emotional affairs. Perhaps not in the grueling fashion I’ve described above (and, to be sure, overall the event was stunning in its beauty and electric in it joy), but the kind of energy, effort, and emotion that go into a successful wedding is, I would argue, fertile ground for some hefty psycho-analytic digging if you’re of a mind.
The theme that stuck with me throughout all of this, and upon which I touched prior to my stag weekend, is what it means to be a man in this day and age. That question has been sitting squarely upon my chest over the past couple of months, demanding answers as I’ve inched closer towards the precipices of “husband” and “father”.
There are those at the League who are in a much better position, perhaps, to answer those questions than I am, but I think the discussion itself doesn’t get as much play as it ought to at a time when its outcomes might mean more to us than we care to consider.
Much of my Freudian/Jungian gymnastics these past few weeks have been a partially conscious and partially sub-conscious effort to get straight with my own sense of self so as to take those new and upcoming roles on with a clean challis of manhood in the hopes of moving the ball forward a few yards. It remains true that patriarchy is alive and well within much more intimate walls than those over which we peer in some portions of the Middle East, and so I am not of the persuasion to start calling for “Man Studies” or “Male Studies” within the halls of academia. Neither too, am I of the inflection to rail against the hard fought truths presented us by feminists of a variety of waves that have cut down some of the most sacred and unjust cows of Western maleness.
We men have been sent a couple of rungs down the hierarchical ladder, and rightly so — we’ve needed the chastening and cowing as badly as our female counterparts deserved the empowering and enabling.
But it strikes me that what has resulted from this process is, as far as my explorations have yielded, a juvenilization of manhood that is no more helpful to our overall cause than the Zeusification of manhood previously installed. No where was this more evident than when I sought to locate symbols and models of manhood upon which to fashion my travails as girding foundations towards a greater edifice. As I sought out contemporary examples of manhood I found myself awash in a sea of boys, pale ghosts of the gender whose response to the unpleasantness of their sins revealed has been to regress into some kind of Homer Simpson-like cocoon of childish stupidity epitomized by an all too often spoke phrase.
“I dunno…”
Amusing as the Homer Simpsons, Jim Belushis, and Kevin James’ of the world might appear on the surface, not only do I find them an offensive and unnecessarily inaccurate depiction of my gender, I also think them thoroughly destructive to our overall cause. An empowered and strong woman is, at least in my experience and estimation, ill-satisfied and paired with a dullard as a counterpart, and if we are to address many of the pressing issues that face us today, we are best suited to have everyone — male and female, man and woman — firing on as many cylinders as possible.
It is in this regard that I think the women of the world have as much at stake in encouraging a productive discussion about what it means to be a healthy man in this twenty-first century as we males ourselves do. The outcome will, in part, determine how we choose approach and cultivate the next generation of sons (and daughters) into will-be fathers and husbands. The conversation needs be seen as a forward moving dialogue that does not seek to brush aside the daming critiques of patriarchal dominance, but rather takes those truths to heart and seeks to find ways of discerning an equal strength in manhood that is augmented by its sensitivity to those truths. We might seek to build a platform of manhood that lifts all of the benefits of classically pragmatic male sensibility and marries it with the requisite softness of soul to feel into the spaces we deserve to live, breathe, and be.
Such a conversation ought, in this authour’s mind, to be welcomed, not feared; embraced, not rejected; excited, not erased and it is up to those of us who are struggling with its payload to summon the necessary wherewithal to initiate its sounding chords.
Obviously, there will be a multitude of men that result from our alchemy — our deep bonds of similarity do not exclude the vitality of our differences in live embodiment (indeed, they in fact bolster them). But look, at the end of the day, all I’m saying is that I ought to be able to do better than Peter Griffin… n’est pas?
Good to be back, I missed y’all.
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{ 51 comments }
Welcome back, Scott. Lovely post.
Welcome back, my man.
From my recollection, things got easier after I got married. Well, after an *AWFUL* “who the hell *IS* this person???” first year.
But, after we hammered that first year out, I cannot believe how much easier stuff got (of course, I married a good one).
I trust you married a good one. Good. Know that things will get easier.
Good luck.
That’s a helluva return post.
Good luck. If your thinking about your issue, feelings, thoughts, dreams you have the right start. If you are stuffing all that crap then you are in trouble.
I agree about the infantilization of men in our culture. It drives me nuts. Homer Simpson was supposed to be satire not a role model, yet to many men think dumb, drunk and loud is the way to go through life. It’s so odd that one the aspects of patriarchy has been to keep generations of women out of many of the arts and intellectual pursuits, while many men are pushing themselves away from all that.
J – as per yr question. The wedding cake was cupcakes, so nothing went up anyone’s nose.
Greg – funny how something that was satire has become the norm, especially when there is no symbology against which to foil the satire.
I AM SO RELIEVED!!!
Whenever I have spoken to someone who has gotten divorced, I asked them if cake went up the nose and they said yes. People who have been married for, like, ever have told me “of course no cake went up the nose!!!”
I predict a long and happy marriage for you, my man.
Mazel Tov!
That’s funny. I don’t recall any cake going up my nose, though I got some on my cheek I believe. What does that portend oh reader of cake crumbs?
Hey, if the people can’t keep from forcing cake up each other’s nose on the heretofore most important day of their lives when they stand in front of their parents, their best friends, and God, they won’t be able to handle stuff like “money discussions”.
If cake ends up on the cheek because, hey, cake ended up on the cheek… well, that’s where cake ended up.
If cake is up your nose on your wedding day?
Well, that’s cake up your nose.
I have seen some of those cake-eating moments at weddings that bordered on domestic violence. I told my wife flat-out that if she shoved cake in my face I was going to shove her whole head through the top tier. That’s just how I roll.
We had a civil cake-eating moment and we’re about to celebrate our 5th anniversary.
I second Jaybird. The first year is hell. But it’s soooo worth the work.
Might I suggest, as a way of facilitating your quest and questions, you visit here. My favorite was Day 18 though all are worth doing.
“Amusing as the Homer Simpsons, Jim Belushis, and Kevin James’ of the world might appear on the surface, not only do I find them an offensive and necessarily inaccurate depiction of my gender, I also think them thoroughly destructive to our overall cause.”
I don’t watch a lot of TV but I’m somewhat aware of the cartoon, cartoonish, figures you reference above. So I can’t offer anything meaningful with regard to those shows. What I do notice on TV are the commercials that so often depict men as absolute dolts. The poor dears can’t even do yard work without killing most of the vegetation in sight. Thank god the little lady is around to set things right. And then there is the dim-wit that even the birds fool into running into clean, Windex, windows. Pisses me off.
And what about the guy who doesn’t know how to make a salad while simultaneously insisting to his wife that lighting a charcoal grill is a difficult and intricate task?
Quibble #1: I think the Homer Simpson is just one example, and quite honestly not the best. I see more and more the straight-up punks and the hipsters as the real threat to manhood. These guys in their late twenties/early thirties acting like seventeen year olds, no responsibilities, apathetic – I mean, at least Homer is lovable. At least he finds some redemption in love and family. And really, I don’t encounter that many Homer Simpsons. More often it is a different, more vain sort of selfishness I see in men today. Part of this is their reaction to a new relationship with the fairer sex – the sort of cultural emasculation by a thousand paper cuts we are seeing happen with no wise sage to tell us how to endure it or adapt to it.
But, then again, there are now more men who are comfortable in both a responsible and more equal role with women, too. It is becoming less of a stigma to be on an even footing, to not necessarily be the primary bread-winner, etc. And that’s a good thing. And adaptation takes time.
So good for you for thinking about it! But I think maybe either our experiences differ or Homer Simpson is simply not the best example.
And here’s Reihan, with the Death of Macho.
I suspect that the whole bumbling thing is a reaction to the (perceived?) loss of power that was once (perceived to be?) held by the Head Of The House.
If the Head Of The House wanted to go out and bowl, or sit in his chair and read the evening paper, or have a night in his den, he was once able to yell “Male Privilege!” (or something) and get that.
Well, yelling “Male Privilege!” is, of course, something that does not work in this day and age.
So men are stuck resorting to the (quite frankly bullshit) play endorsed by Bill Cosby in his “Chocolate Cake for Breakfast” skit.
He wanted to stay in bed.
His wife made him get up and feed the children.
He got up and fed them chocolate cake.
His wife sent him to bed.
The natural order is maintained.
*THAT* is, I’m guessing, the foundation of the whole bumbling thing.
E.D., I don’t disagree with you, per se. You’re on very much the same train of thought as my best man is when it comes to questions of manhood. He tends to look at hipsters and wonder when it became trendy to weigh 90 pounds soaking wet and look consistently lethargic.
The disaffected element of hipsterism worries me, as well. But I’m inclined to think that the males you’re talking about are as much a part of the solution as they are the problem. Seems to me like they’re a reaction to the pervasive imagery to which I’m referring in the post and a resultant complete rejection of maleness altogether. Who wants to take on responsibility and commitment if it means you wind up a fucking dolt?
I think if you go about presenting a positive image, we might find a lot of those males much more amenable to an about face than we think. After all, a bright spot to consider is the position Bruce Springsteen has come to assume in the indie music scene, teaming with just the kinds of males you lament.
As per Homer’s lovableness… all part of the conspiracy, I say. You love Homer because he’s a fucking twit and his family loves him in spite of being a fucking twit. Loving Homer is an invitation to justify stupidity and mediocrity.
They’ll get my integrity when they pry it from my cold dead hands. Until then, Homer, having gone from satire to norm, remains my public enemy number one.
Well Archie Bunker was not meant to be sympathetic but somehow came to be loved and identified with.
Good points, Scott. There is certainly a rejection of masculinity in the hipster movement (and other similar movements.) My grandfather is still one of the central male role models in my life (my father, too, though there is somehow less distance there and thus maybe less perspective.)
In any case, my grandfather was a carpenter, a quiet and gentle man, good with his hands, honest to a fault, patient, fun to play with, a father of eight children and grandfather to at least twenty. Each of his six daughters has married a good, honest, hard-working man who is kind and patient, and successful. In my entire extended family there has only been one divorce (and that is out of four kids on my dad’s side and eight on my mother’s, only two of whom never married).
I think we men forget the importance of being a stable role-model for our daughters. And maybe at the core of much of this is forgetting that the man’s place was not ever as Head of Household, but as the male protagonist in a way. That has never changed and never should change.
I think we men forget the importance of being a stable role-model for our daughters.
Very much so, this is part of my suggestion the discussion about healthy manhood is as important to women as it is to men.
The dynamics of the gender wars, while I get them, need to be something we slowly but steadily move past. We’re all in this together, always have been, really, and are increasingly able to occupy that space openly. Healthy men are as important to women as healthy women are to men. In each case, healthy = strong in their own way (i.e. neither needs to aspire to the strength of the other).
What’s interesting is that after the initial ‘purge’ period when divorce first took off (and mind you that the period took almost 20 years) the numbers settled down for educated women. Educated women overwhelmingly choose marriage and actually seem to be choosing good partners. They seem to understand, even though many would only reluctantly admit it, that a good father is a crucial component to raising good kids. And of course, passing on one’s success is wired into our DNA.
This reminds me of a discussion we had in my Internation Theory class where gender was the topic. And by gender, I mean women. That’s the problem (I find) in a lot of women’s studies: they have difficulty in understanding men so they ignore them. Furthermore, they put themselves into intellectual ghettos with their jingoism. But moving on…
One of the best male figures I have encountered in popular culture today is coach Eric Taylor from the tv show Friday Night Lights. He is strong and caring for his family and for his players.
That should be International Theory class….
“That’s the problem (I find) in a lot of women’s studies: they have difficulty in understanding men so they ignore them. ”
Not enough to keep from presuming to mind-read men. They presume to know for a fact that porn makes men into rapists, or that rape and other “violence agianst women” is intended to subordinate women or on and on and on. They are very clear on what is going on in mens’ minds, men’s intentions and motivations, to hear them tell it.
They don’t ignore men enough.
“The theme that stuck with me throughout all of this, and upon which I touched prior to my stag weekend, is what it means to be a man in this day and age.”
It means to be an antique. There was a cultural identity which it was insisted had basis in biology, which was not then demonstrated, despite the most desperate scrabblings of various academics (“Look! A colour preference analysis, we can sort of fudge things a little by ignoring cross-cultural distinction, assume innateness & then put it all down to evolutionary advantage through berry hunting!!”)
The entire idea of a gender binary is outmoded, so I’m afraid you’ll just have to make up your own mind of who you want to be instead of seizing some pre-made template.
Oh yes, & male studies already exists. It is known as “urology”.
So you’re saying that since gynecology exists, theres no need for Women’s Studies Departments?
I was engaging in a piece of pedantry I deem valuable: male is a physical term, masculine a physical ones. A rather unwholesome tendency towards disfigurement within certain cultures asides all males have the same genitals, but what constitutes masculine varies from society to society, culture to sub/counterculture.
One thing I’ve learned and strive for, aside from being comfortable as a man — not having to prove anything –, is that I might not always know what to do or say, but I can at least be kind.
Word.
Though I was also tempted to say something like “I’ve got your antiquated, seized, pre-made, cultural identity… RIGHT HERE.”
That’s the best slap-down I’ve received in a long, long time. Good to have you back, Scott.
Oh James, your pre-fabricated, insta-rejection, no thought required, cookie-cutter, psuedo counter-culture approved, condescension tinted response makes you soooo cool. Why don’t you go play with the other drones at The Daily Kos, the grown-ups are having an actual conversation not hurling self-righteous talking points at one another like so much feces.
Misreplied. Above (3.04am, apparently) was to this.
Thank you Scott for this great post. I know this may sound odd, but your struggle reminds me of what I’ve been going through for the last 32 years. As a gay man, I struggle each day to understand what it means to be a real man – as much of society deems my status as not a ‘real’ man. Like you, I did not see the Zeusified version nor the juvenile version as being ‘real’. In my ongoing struggle I’ve realized the number one thing to being a man is to remember, and respect, that we’re all human; and different. This has helped me to understand that my own journey is natural and I can’t expect to answer it all at once. While I hope you find peace in the moment, I also hope you continue on your journey. Best regards.
After the buzzword riddled snark of my initial comment here I thought I’d deal with things with a little more depth. I don’t know how to console Scott, but he’s sparked off a lot of ideas (or rather, connected a lot that were already there in ways I wouldn’t have expected) which I thought I would share. I suppose they’re far more macro than micro, but it’s related to one of the smallest units in human affairs (the domestic). Firstly I’d like to comment on the single instance of buzzwording I found in Scott’s article, that of “Patriarchy”. I’m of the view that Lacan should have stuck to pushing soap, but a concept I think needs to be engaged with.
Firstly I should say that the aforelinked article by Reihan is the best thing I’ve read from him, & raises a trove of valuable points, issues & examples. For convenience’s sake I’ll lin k to it again here:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/06/18/the_death_of_macho
There are also a few links I’d like to share.
Firstly, Professor Richard D. Wolff explaining the present financial crisis:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7382297202053077236&hl=en
Secondly, the Financial Times:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e23c6d04-659d-11de-8e34-00144feabdc0.html
(Also, on a parallel note, if you have the time check out this post: http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/011204.html where K Punk explains how the end of rising wages killed Motown & accordingly triggered Michael Jackson’s metamorphosis from disco dancefloor hearthrob to a colder, leaner street based move machine.)
You’ll note that the Financial Times & the crumbling Marxist professor are at some stages saying exactly the same thing, which happens a lot more often than you’d think. In summary the problem is: wages stopped rising. Living standards, however, did not: people tried to keep up with the elite cadre of the hugely affluent, something that they could only manage through borrowing money from those they were attempting to emulate. You might now be wondering about the relevance of all this to the matter at hand.
Simple: Homer Simpson.
This boor is best described as oafish, with his tendency towards mishap making him seem adorable and an object of pathos, rather than ending up the threatening and malevolent character that most who throttle their children would be. But I think focusing upon this attribute, his failing, causes you to overlook the way in which Homer is actually significantly superior to the actual everyman: the Simpsons can exist upon his wage alone. Marge constantly adopts jobs, then abandons them before the end of the episode. These are frivolities, rather than necessities. She’s a housewife, the writers ensure that she never steps beyond this (I’m tempted to add “& into the public sphere”, but I’m both trying to avoid jargon altogether here & detest that particular piece of jargon anyway).
This is quite obviously an area where The Simpsons (as well as Family Guy) parts way with realism: judging by the size of their house their finances would be unsustainable. Which brings us to the connection between the matter at hand & my seemingly non sequitorious introduction of real wages: mortgages.
When the first of the 2nd wave of feminists attacked the Patriarchy they were attacking a system which kept middle class women stifled inside the home. In the present day our economy has shifted so greatly that middle class women have to work. They’ve gone from being forced out of the job market to being forced into it. (As it happens that was always true of working class women, hence the name. It’s rather shameful that this is overlooked, but I suppose inevitable.) There are debts to be paid off, & the standard mortgage is a dual payer, with both partners needing to work in order to keep the beast at bay.
So this quite clearly transforms the position of women, but what of men? Simple: it eradicates their former function. They are no longer the exclusive earners.
At the risk of absurd amounts of reductionism there were two roles for men, one which died during the late first half of the 20th century & another which died during the late second: they were warrior & provider, respectively. After the end of the 2nd World War the world powers backed away from the massive amounts of carnage they’d previously reveled in (check the propaganda of the time for the exuberance forcefully associated with warfare, there’s no mistaking it) & settled into peace. Obviously the Cold War was still immensely messy, but that was largely via proxy (Sandinista vs. Contras was a late example) & while Korea & Vietnam kept the army busy they didn’t create a lasting soldier identity that could capture the masses. Conscription ended. That one of the largest elements of the counter-culture was the Anti-War movement is fairly telling, & the contribution of Vietnam veterans to this, effectively arguing vehemently for their own obsolesce, is particularly memorable.
(We’ll leave aside the widespread “fragging” of officers by lower ranking Vietnam War conscripts due to its irrelevance, but if you don’t know what I’m talking about then read it up, it’s fascinating.)
So in lieu of that a new role was needed, with that obviously becoming the male provider, earning the family’s keep in exchange for such paltry ritual demands as food on the table when he returned home. I won’t pontificate on how well that worked out as an identity during a time it was forged (although what I’ve read of the research on its existence in Britain suggests it was always more true culturally than economically, with the notion that women’s work was somehow for “treats”, while the man’s was for essentials broadly popular for a few decades), because for our purposes what matters is that in the present its condition is fairly obvious: it’s fucked. Courtesy of the aforementioned static, stagnant wages mixed with the ample unemployment provided firstly by Reaganomics, then by the recession (see: Reihan) it’s simply no longer sustainable. A married couple is in a state of economic symbiosis, rather than following a provider-dependent dynamic.
Marge is at least pulling part time.
So what is the purpose of a man? I’m not going to attempt to answer that, because I think it’s silly. It’s like asking “Why is the sky?” Attempting to justify people is a fool’s errand. That’s the sort of question you have to deal with only because of the absurdity of the (alright, jargon time, I do apologise) gender binary. The problem isn’t actually an economic one, it’s that our culture has tried to squeeze itself into the binary like a forty year old into a corset.
It was always a nonsense, & now has supposedly rendered half the population pointless. That’s the sort of catastrophic outcome that you can only get through so foolishly ambitious a project as sorting mankind into halves. It is imperative that we shift away from this preposterous perception of humanity, & realise that we aren’t, never have been and never could be sorted into two distinct categories of being, irrespective of what that affluent charlatan & fake degree holding fraud “Dr.” John Gray may claim. You might as well take the taller and shorter half of humanity & proclaim some inherent, innate & unalterable difference in personality which forever held the two apart, waving aside any complaints by reference to the obviously differing statures, that nobody can deny, plus some load-bearing anecdotes about “short man syndrome”.
If realisation of the idiocy of gender binarism can be spread quickly enough we might avoid the calamity Reihan alludes to. Otherwise, we’ll just come up with some other moronic, untenable & unstable “role” for half of the population which will await yet another messy crisis to bring it crashing down with millions of people trapped within it, & once again forget that humans are an end in themselves.
James,
While I appreciate all the writing you did there, your base claim hasn’t fundamentally changed and you still haven’t provided any supportive argumentation for it. So as of yet, I still do not have anything to which I might choose to reply.
What would be helpful would be for you to outline why you find “gender binarism” idiotic or, put more constructively, inaccurate. As this is the basis of your rejection, some contextual reasoning would go a long way towards sparking a real discussion.
Apologies for the delay.
I don’t think that I really need to. The claim that there are differences between men & women beyond the distinction between male & female (or rather, than male & female is the source of most or all of what is considered masculine & feminine) is a claim. I do not think it is a well supported one. I am, as ever, incapable of proving a negative.
Well James, I can only take that as meaning that you cannot support your claim and that there is, therefore, no discussion to be had. Unfortunate, it could have been a good one, perhaps.
Fare thee well.
Shawn, thanks for sharing. I think our struggling with this is not so dissimilar and so I don’t find the context of your comment odd at all. Part of the underlying and unspoken thesis of this post is that definitions of what it means to be a man (and definitions/understanding in general) change over time due to a variety of factors and that we are well suited to inquire into what impacts those factors have on both our intellectual and lived understanding of the term and the identity.
In short, I think the take home of yr comment holds true: the journey is never over in an evolving and dynamic world. My questions in this post are about what we might take the term/identity “man” or quality of “manhood” to mean in this particular slice of space-time. No absolute answers here, though. The road carries ever on.
James, thanks for coming back with something to bite into. Your comment requires more time than I have right now, but will attempt a response in a timely fashion.
And glad to be back.
Take your time, Scott. I imagine you’re busier than you’ve ever been, around now.
shawninPhx: Your comment reminded me of this article: http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=766 where Johann talks gays in cinematic history. As a student of Byzantine history (as often as they let me be, at least) I’m roughly as irritated with the depictions of eunuchs as effeminate Hari mentions as I am homosexuals, general Narses oversaw the final stages of the conquest of Italy & practically every successful Empress regent relied on them near totally to head their armies, forchristssake!
But yes, homosexual manhood is certainly not something mainstream culture helps much with, although that’s mitigated by ample material both from gay culture (My Beautiful Laundrettes is an especially elegant society) and its grumpy outsiders (the beloved-by-all-Gentlemen raconteur Andrew Sullivan springs to mind, I consider Dan Savage to be lodged somewhere between these two poles; to marvelous effect).
As a bisexual I get to reap the bounty of all that good stuff, plus don’t have the cultural baggage of effeminate depictions (it’s largely more convenient for people to pretend we don’t exist). I’d imagine being a full time queer is a little trickier, best of luck with it.
ShawninPhx,
You bring a very interesting point into the discussion. Our stereotypical view of gay men is that they are the antithesis of ‘manly’. So how does that reconcile with a modern view of manhood? Is it the slow movement towards a sort of universal ‘metrosexual’ type of man, or will we make our peace with a very diverse and flexible definition of manhood.
I guess for me it seems so easy. I hunt, I chew tobacco, I build and fix things, I box, I farm, I parent my children, I try to be a good husband. I seem to meet all the criteria that society has laid out to be a manly man. But I also have friends who meet none of the above criteria and are without a doubt…men.
I’m extremely interested to hear how men like yourself fit into the large landscape of manhood. I know you have a place and an important one. Just curious as to where you see it as being.
Captain Picard. Captain Picard is a pretty great contemporary positive example of what it means to be a man.
So, there’s one.
Well played, Moff. I can’t argue with Picard. A diamond in the rough, that one.
Which claim would that be, Scott?
Grow up, James. When you want to have a real discussion you know where to find me.
Well that was unobliging…
You did kinda start out on the wrong foot in response to a post that was kinda intensely personal for the author.
Just sayin’.
A lack of empathy & inter-personal skills is in my nature. ;)
Part of being a man is overcoming one’s nature and choosing to be more than a bundle of reactions.
If I may get all Dangermouse.
You may (<3 him), but the problem here is that that's inadvertantly couched in troublesomely oppositional terms: if it's men who have to do that then don’t women have to? & if they have to as well then how is that a definitively & exclusively “Manly” characteristic? Surely it’s a human characteristic. Perhaps an adult one.
(Thread seems to be broken, probably for the best. :3 Third time I’ve tried to post this..)
I see it like this.
I have a host of expectations for myself. Some are tied to my humanity. Some are tied to my masculinity.
For example! I never, ever, want to be put (again) in a position where I have to hear my wife say “everything is going to be okay”. Sometimes things are going to be okay, sometimes they’re going to suck. It is, however, my goal to make sure that the things that suck are well within acceptable circumstances and circumstances where I need her to be the stalwart one saying “everything is going to be okay” are well outside of them.
We can deal with cats dying, crazy political situations, nuclear war, etc. But if there is a situation where someone is going to say “everything is going to be okay”, it’ll be me.
Psychoanalyze away.
I really don’t know enough about your personal circumstances to say whether that’s wise (nor am I expecting you to tell me that much, obviously), but if that makes you happy then very well. As I’ve tried to outline, though, it is not only an ideal for males in general which is impossible at the moment, but one which is decreasingly likely to be achievable. Again, if it works for you then I’m not going to argue against that, as a utilitarian all I want is for you (& everyone) to be happy.
But I don’t think it’s something which holds for a whole culture.
On a related note, I thought I’d apologise to Scott (again?) for my poor entry to this thread. It was a consequence of a longstanding tendency of mine of missing stuff (other instances in LoG include misattributing a view to E.D. which he explicitly referenced as one belonging to Mark, & to less devastating effect failing to realise that Jaybird was the one who had written the Post-Theist Morality thread until late last night). Idk if this is anything to do with my delightfully vague ‘specific learning difficulty’, but that sort of cock-up seems to be an unnervingly common thing. In this instance I didn’t read the parts about Scott’s father’s death, as well as missing most of the tonal cues. My response would have been knee-jerkish & terrible irrespective of context, but those were the conditions it came from: a less than thorough reading of the above article.
As for the issue of “claims”, I don’t know exactly what elicited the “grow up” response, but I’m still unaware of whether Scott was expecting me to disprove the biological essentialist case (which I can’t do, negatives being impossible to prove, etc) or justify my value judgement of the cultural construct of the gender binary being a bad thing. The latter I’d give a go, if he wants.
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