this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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I mean yeah, they should probably be ungendered, but in our society they still do get gendered. A lot of expectation is placed on men to be the kind of hard-working person that will work a 50 hour week, put food on the table, be a perfect and present father to their children and a dependable rock for their partner while being perfectly in control of their emotions themselves (and don't you even think about crying) and still have time to build a furnace and teach the eldest how to change a tire and have an active social life and work out and improve themselves and do all those other things that a normal person needs to do. It's not good and it's not right, and it's not even what the OP was specifically talking about in the post, but that's why you'll see words like "strong", "dependable", "capable", etc thrown around in this thread a lot, because men like to feel that way because it feels like they've achieved at least some part of the frankly impossible image that's placed in young boy's heads of what a man should be.
I appreciate your breakdown. In other words, what you’re saying is that a man’s feeling of manliness is most often rooted in how closely he resembles societal expectations.
I think it’s pretty much the most reasonable explanation. But it still strikes me that men generally do not themselves think about it in those terms, and in fact consider it to be inherently emasculating. Masculinity viewed through this lens in essence becomes an act of submission to an outside force, which stands in contrast to many evident directives of masculinity such as independence and inherent drive.
Indeed the OP touches on this, implying that masculinity simply must be secured from within, with brazen disregard for the way others perceive you.
So if it does really come down to matching expectations, then it seems to be, as you said, frankly impossible
Yeah that's pretty much my thought as well. I don't seem to ever concern myself with "feeling" like a man, or even acting like one. I just act like who I am, and mostly concern myself with just trying to be a better human and I'm a long work in progress on that. But none of it is tied to some conscious sense of masculinity. I know the culture I was raised in certainly has an unconscious influence, but I can only effect those as I am made aware of them. For sure some of my worst traits are associated with maleness, but I don't consider them what makes me feel like a man when they come out, and for sure make me feel like an asshole. And we men and women both have assholes ;-)