This comment by Mark on the post I Am a Man
Nice work, Scott. This is the same message i’ve been trying to get across to friends and family for quite awhile. But man this is hard, too hard in a lot of way sometimes. The old ideas are just so ingrained. Try discussing this with strangers and you get to the point of rather than do that you’d feel better putting nails in your head. My wife knows me and knows i’m not this culture’s typical. But loves me anyway. My sister in laws know me but not as well and both aspire to typical men ideal in their viewpoint, which in some measure implies I wouldn’t be it. So could I or can I really trust them with myself? As the sphere gets larger from this center, the more i’m expected to be even more typical.
In any event, what is truly typical is in fact everyone, underlined everyone, is atypical, but everybody has it backwards. What is typical doesn’t exist. The bell curve of normal is so wide as to be almost a flat line, with the tails at both ends almost non existent.
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Food for Thought:
The only way to evolve past destructive manhood stereotypes is to accept and empower boys to be the kind of man they are meant to be.
Thoughts?
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Bet you’re not in at least one area of your life. To be 100% stereotypical would be atypical indeed. 🙂
You say everyone is atypical, but I’m not. I’m the one exception…. : – )