“Western” Masculinity (Part 2 / 3) — Defined by what it is not
There is an awful lot of concern about men and how we are supposed to act these days, that we are losing sight of “Western Masculinity.”
There are many conflicting opinions and viewpoints, many concerns about the way men used to act, act now, and should act going forward.
There is, unsurprisingly, a lot of mythologizing, misunderstanding, and ignorance surrounding the topic — tales of bygone days that never existed and a golden age of humanity and gender relations that never happened.
Like our thinking regarding many different topics, the ideas surrounding masculinity tend to be cherry-picked and incomplete, they tend to be vague and misleading, they have this incredibly bizarre tendency to conveniently “prove” the point of the person spouting half-baked nonsense.
I really got to thinking about this after reading an article here on Medium by another writer, Katie Jgln:
Katie’s article got me thinking because it explained some of the differences between how I view masculinity and the way that many of the people around me seem to view it. In many “Western” nations like Canada, the USA, and various places in Europe, the idea of masculinity is presented in a very specific, and often quite rigid way. As it turns out, there are other cultures that view masculinity in a different light. I feel like I identify much more strongly with some of these other definitions, and I think that some of these other views may have a mitigating effect on some of the more toxic elements of masculinity that are brought up so often.
Katie and the King
Katie’s article centered around Danish King Frederick X’s ascension to the throne in January of this year. People always love a story about royalty, but this story sparked discussion for a whole different reason: King Frederick, while giving public speeches around this time, showed emotions.
He cried a little.
As anyone my age living in the culture I was raised in knows, boys don’t cry, which made the kings display rather….shall we say “triggering” to many of the worlds most special and sensitive snowflakes.
While there hasn’t been any kind of massive backlash, there has been quite a bit of discussion around whether or not the king crying was a healthy and normal expression of emotion in a man, or a sign of weakness, evidence that the modern world has changed our men into effeminate weaklings unfit to lead.
In Denmark, and nations with a similar culture, this was viewed as normal and positive, they saw a king who is in fact an actual human, a person capable of acknowledging the stress of responsibility and major life changes happening, a person with the intelligence and self-awareness to worry that he could possibly not be equal to the task set before him.
So how is it that two (or more) people can look at the same thing and come away with two (or more) completely contradictory interpretations of what they have seen?
I think that a great number of our misunderstandings come down to the simple fact that we often find ourselves using different definitions for the same word.
For example, if I were to ask you to list what makes a country “great,” I can virtually guarantee that your list will not look exactly like mine. Similarly, if I ask you what constitutes good evidence, let’s say for deciding on a medical treatment, it is highly unlikely that you and I will draw the cutoff line for “good” evidence at the same place.
The story is precisely the same when it comes to the definition of masculinity — when we use the same word we often mean very different things which can quickly lead to confusion, misunderstanding, and hostility.
Much of this came into focus for me when Katie wrote:
“What’s particularly interesting is that while American men contrasted manhood to womanhood, Danish men contrasted manhood to boyhood.
In other words, in the US, you’re a man if you’re nothing like a woman, but in Denmark, you’re a man if you’re no longer a boy.“
Throughout my life the definition of manhood has confused me a little because a number of the classically “manly” behaviors that many seem to promote strike me as childish posturing or the throwing of an adult-sized temper tantrum.
In other words, many of the behaviors that men are supposedly meant to embody have been things that leave me feeling embarrassed to see — it’s just awkward to see a full grown adult screaming and flailing and making threats like a small, angry child that isn’t getting his way. The American-style contrast against womanhood never fit well with me because it seems sexist, to start, but also feels like something that goes out of its way to limit who and what you can be, for both men and women.
As a man you aren’t supposed to like shoes, because that is a girl’s interest. You shouldn’t like clothes, or dancing, or any of a million other things that have been deemed “too girly.”
But what about the women who have far more interest in guns, cars, and sports than me or other men?
What about the men who do like clothes and shoes and make up?
And what exactly is it that makes a show girly and a beer manly?
Why is a car cool dude stuff and flowers are gross girl stuff?
Perhaps more relevant to what seems like a common existential issue faced by so many people around the world today:
How am I supposed to build an identity out of the things that I am not allowed to be?
How am I supposed to have a stable sense of self when my life is spent changing who I am to please others?
How am I meant to have an authentic self with the limited selection of “appropriate interests” set before me?
Where exactly is Spencer in all of this, where is the Me and the things that matter to me in this never ending list of all the things I have to not be?
This simply cannot be the right way.
Still a boy, not yet a man
I do think that it makes a lot more sense to contrast manhood with boyhood as opposed to trying man as being “not woman.”
Viewing the category of woman and all feminine things as something to avoid being is inherently sexist and subtly (or not so subtly) reinforces the idea that men are the gold standard and that women are a lesser thing, that the worst thing that could happen to a man is that he become like a woman.
It also just seems strange to focus on something you never were and were never trying to be; men have not “outgrown” being a woman because we never were women. Hopefully, as a man you have outgrown being a boy, you are, I pray, now an adult in mind as well as body and it is this “adultness” that should be the benchmark for adult men to aspire to in the same way that adult women should contrast their femininity to the girls they used to be.
Viewing manliness as a lack of childish petulance, irresponsibility and immaturity also has the positive knock on effect of de-emphasizing the traits that have come to be known as “toxic masculinity.”
The toxic traits that are frequently brought up involve adults displaying the exact kinds of behavior you would expect from a child in the same situation: an inability to regulate emotions, an inability to think like an adult, an inability to compromise or handle hardship, a tendency to fall back on threats and violence to distract from the generalized incompetence and inability to act like anything other than an angry child.
When a child is blocked from what they want, they lash out like a dumb animal, they punch anything they can reach and flip small objects over, they scream insults and try their absolute hardest to inflict pain on everyone else.
If I can’t have my way, everyone needs to suffer!
Now it’s all I can see when a grown man starts yelling or trying to intimidate people with his size, when he turns beet-red over a minor embarrassment, when he flips a table or punches a wall in a rage.
All I see now is the dumb animal.
All I see is a petulant little child piloting a big, dumb body and throwing a temper tantrum, like a two year old does.
If I can’t have my way, everyone needs to suffer!
We’re all human, but we can and should grow up
Please understand that I am not saying it is wrong to feel emotion, I am not saying it is wrong to get upset or yell and scream.
I am certainly not trying to imply that I am somehow above emotion, that I never let my feelings cloud my judgment and leave me acting like a silly child. I absolutely lose my temper, I absolutely act like a dumb animal at times, but I am quite thoroughly embarrassed afterwards that I have failed to be what I aspire to be and have fallen back into the habit of being the absolute least thing that I can be.
What I am trying to get at is that we can and should work at controlling and channeling our emotions towards good, rather than letting our feelings rule us and lead us into doing evil to others.
There are plenty of situations where a great deal of anger is entirely appropriate, causes like the fight against racism and sexism are certainly places where anger belongs on account of how stupid and ridiculous it is that we are arguing whether certain people count as people, in 2024!
Be angry and act out, but do it in an adult way.
Make your righteous rage count for something real and punch a hole in oppression rather than a wall.
Punch up and not down.
“Be a man” and take charge
Maybe not the best way to say it, but you get what I mean yes?
Take charge of what it actually means to be a man and stop letting other people define it for you.
Stop letting the worst men define masculinity to you and the rest of us.
It makes sense to define what you are by what you have outgrown and what you are aspiring to be.
It makes no sense to build your identity around what you are not or what you feel you must not be.
Defining masculinity as what a woman is not gives away all the power, freedom, and control over what it means to be a man — you are not setting yourself up as some independent alpha, you are building a pitiful caricature out of the scraps you have been told are acceptable.
The current trend in which men seem to be getting their advice from the “manosphere” is just trapping men in an endless cycle of trying to live up to someone else’s standard rather than doing “the manly thing” and leading by example, forging your own path, and making your own mark.
If we instead define masculinity by the childish habits, attitudes, and ideas we used to hold gives us all back the sense of accomplishment, you can see how far you have come, you can see that you are better today and that you can be better still tomorrow.
Defining masculinity with your efforts and your progress along the journey to being a better and more ideal version of yourself places the power and control straight back into your hands — you get to decide what actually makes you a good and worthy man, you get to move yourself towards that goal, you get to help shape the definition of masculinity by setting a positive example for others to aspire to.
I have frequently been told that I am not a real man: I was too scrawny, I was friends with girls (they are for dating and sex only, apparently), I wasn’t into sports, I wasn’t into cars, I garden, I cook, I listen to and respect other people’s opinions, I can be convinced with evidence and sound arguments, I’ve just generally failed to be as “manly” as some would like.
I have never bothered to contest these claims all that hard because the definition of man being placed before me has always felt so damned unmanly.
I do not view a “real man” as someone who bullies or pressures others to get their way, I do not see it as tough or manly to punch down at the vulnerable or the oppressed, I do not see manliness is those who vote in their own self-interest while leaving others to suffer, I do not see the masculinity in bigotry of any kind.
All of these behaviors, present in women too of course but frequently seen most strongly in men, do not strike me as the actions of a masculine manly man.
These kinds of actions and attitudes strike me instead as what a child would do; children are often greedy, selfish, narcissistic and cruel because they have yet to learn better, they have not yet had the time and opportunity to become something more.
As an adult, that excuse no longer applies to you or I.
If you are still acting like an angry, entitled child, it seems quite clear to me that you are still just a boy, not yet a man.
But you can be.
Come back soon and let’s chat about the difficulty of hitting a moving target like masculinity, and that maybe we need a bigger target, a more relaxed idea of what it is to be a man.
Part 3 can be found here:
