Carlos Andrés Gómez is on a mission to reclaim the phrase “man up” to reflect all the best things about masculinity today.
The phrase “man up” haunted my childhood. It was used to demean everything I was and constantly remind me that I was falling short of some masculine ideal. Today the phrase is ubiquitous as ever, appearing in magazines and television shows and referenced ad nauseam in advertising campaigns. Almost uniformly, the phrase’s meaning has remained the same—a guy isn’t “acting like a man” or “man enough” so he is belittled and shamed.
When I was growing up, “man up” was used to enforce my behavior, especially when I expressed emotion, appeared weak or needed help. As an adult, I continue to watch men around me use the phrase to promote senseless violence, homophobia, sexual conquest, and the most destructive of male behaviors—excessive drinking, drug use, and high stakes risk-taking.
I am on a mission to reclaim and redefine what the phrase “man up” means, so that boys and young men coming of age now can be spared from its wrath. There is a critical mass of men already helping to challenge the outdated model of masculinity (many of which are regular readers and contributors of The Good Men Project), but it’s time for all of us to finally come together and embrace this urgent movement to redefine what it means to be a man. By doing so, we are not only advocating for our own well-being, but also promoting a better, healthier, safer, happier world for all.
♦◊♦
Here are 25 ways (by no means comprehensive) to reclaim what it means to “man up”:
Be a Peacemaker: Whether it’s out at the club on a Saturday night, an afternoon on the block, or at your family reunion, diffuse conflict and be an advocate for the bigger picture.
Leave the Tears on your Face: Have the courage to express your emotions publicly and unapologetically; it lets younger guys know it’s okay to have emotions and be sensitive.
Communicate: Openly, humbly, vulnerably, and constructively. Even when you’re scared. Even when it’s really hard. It’s always better than the alternative.
Get an Environmentally-Friendly Car (or Bike!): Break a heavy-handed male stereotype, respect planet Earth, and save money on gas.
Be a Great Parent: Try your best, actively listen, teach them all you know, read to them, hug them, tell your kids how much they mean to you.
Forgive: Whether it’s the jerk on the L train or your father, make peace and let go.
Seek Help: Same rule applies to directions, carrying a massive oak table, and emotional baggage—it’s okay to not do it alone. In fact, we’re all better off when we don’t.
Cook: Embrace the joy and fulfillment of watching a plate of food you made light up a person’s face.
Embrace Fear: Many of the most profound breakthroughs can happen when we face fear head-on and stop running.
Spend Quality Time with your Family: Put down the paper, turn off the smart phone and go play in the backyard.
Change a Diaper: Embrace the gift of being able to change a diaper for your child or baby sibling. It’s a memory you will always have.
Be Flexible: Men are endlessly stereotyped as not being able to adapt—channel your inner Lao Tzu and accept what you can’t control, while joyously swimming in whatever current has swept you up.
Be Responsible: Whether it’s volunteering to be the designated driver, babysitting your little cousin or managing your money, recognize that your precious gift of a life comes with necessary responsibility.
Lead with Your Heart: Have the courage to show how much you care—about your family and friends but also whatever you’re passionate about.
Advocate for Women: Standing up for your mama, sister, and niece, that’s the easy part. But what about that stranger your friend is ogling right now?
Support the LGBT Community: We’re so much better than belittling others for who they love or how they identify their gender.
Be Gentle: Sometimes the greatest power exists in a warm hug or soft whisper… other times, simply in a smile.
Mentor a Child: Organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters are always looking for more male mentors, especially men of color. Giving up a couple afternoons a month could literally change a kid’s a life for the better.
Be Humble: Be brave enough to follow someone else’s lead. Recognize that you’re part of a much bigger purpose than just you.
Be Healthy: Exercise, eat healthy, get good sleep, lower your stress, and prioritize happiness.
Hold Yourself Accountable: Don’t be too proud to say when you’re wrong or take responsibility when you make a mistake.
Value your Partner’s Sexual Needs: Make it a priority to respect and honor your partner’s sexual boundaries and celebrate satisfying his or her sexual needs.
Play, Everyday: I’m not talking about Playstation or X Box here, I mean play. Indulge your imagination and your curious heart. Playing keeps us alive, creative, present, and youthful.
Say “I Love You”: Say it to your male friends, female buddies, family, or whoever is most special to you in your life. Let them know how much they mean to you. You never know when it might be your last chance to do so.
Recognize that You Are Enough: This world tries to fool us into believing that we were all born inadequate. Love what you got. Celebrate and cherish it. Know that you are beautiful, important, irreplaceable, and powerful.
What are some other examples YOU can think of to redefine the phrase “man up”?
Image of “man up” courtesy of Shutterstock
About Carlos Andrés Gómez
Good post. Can’t say I agree with everything on it but that’s cool.
I’m in my forties so my list is different and includes some of the things I’ve learnt along the way.
http://www.writingsofamidlifeman.com/2012/06/24/forty-by-40-the-big-list-of-things-i-learnt-by-the-age-of-forty/
I disagree on the tenet of simply what the phrase implies. It implies that you are only worth something if you fit into the expectations. I advocate the removal of the phrase altogether, simply because men should not be defined by their actions, but by their own personal identity.
Men shouldn’t be expected to man up in the first place.
“Shine The Light on Domestic Violence in Times Square” Oct. 2nd at 6:30 PM with Eve Ensler and Stop Street Harassment and Hollaback!
Support victims….support your sisters, nieces, daughters, mothers, your aunts, and co-workers who may be silenced…
I agree Leila, but I like also to add to your list: your brothers, your father, your close friends male and female. In other words help and support whoever may be silenced, both male and female.
What Blurpo said. And, for once, would it be OK to focus on the issue at hand? This article is about one of the ways in which MEN are silenced, in this case by a phrase that’s as often used by the women in a man (or boy’s) life as by other men. Could we maybe, just once, appreciate it without diluting it?
Do we really have to turn every single discussion about men into a discussion about men being evil and women being victims? Really?
I’m almost certain ( I lied, I am certain) that it was not stated that men are “evil”.
What Lars meant was patently obvious, Manda, and easily understood.
Evil? Not necessarily.
Inherently inadequate? Why yes, of course!
No. I refuse to be shamed and ignored simply because I am a man. I will not support your hate campaign.
Only the female population? What about the thousands of men who are abused? The fathers who are denied meaningful relationships with their children? The men who are falsely accused and sent to prison or excluded from their families?
My favorite take on “Man up!” is the song of that name from the musical, “The Book of Mormon”. You can listen to it at YouTube – http://youtu.be/N1n_1jmKpu4 . The show is created by the same guys behind South Park, so expect profanity and depending on your point of view, blasphemy. If you listen to the whole thing, it may sound disjointed because it’s one of those big numbers that draws from other songs and themes in the show, but the Man Up part is pretty funny even without the full context.
Great list, Carlos. Lots of good points.
I don’t like the phrase “man up” – it implies that by nature of my gender I’m in the wrong and need to compensate and / or improve. I like your list, there’s lots of stuff there’s I think a lot of men would have great fun doing – but I don’t much like the implication that men ought to do those things to prove they are good men.
Most of these 25 are just common sense, and have nothing to do with “manning up”
Man up means to stand up, to have a spine, a backbone, courage, not cower in the face of challenges, problems, threats. It means that you are willing to be the one to take the risk of injury to protect others.
Regarding this list, these are things I’ve always done, and have nothing to do with being male or female. So, I agree with most but not all. The ones I’m not on board with, and why.
Cook. I don’t like to, but I will pick up, and make sure there’s plenty of money for the ingredients.
Advocate for Women: No, advocate for ALL, especially those most disenfranchised. Why should white women be advocated for over and above black boys and men? No one has ever been able to explain that.
Support the LGBT Community: No, support all communities, including the poly. When has the LGBT advocated for the end of the simple act of getting married being considered a felony?
“When has the LGBT community advocated for the simple act of getting married being considered a felony” may be the stupidest and most clueless comment ever to appear on a thread on the GMP since the site first went up.
This comment is a hysterical over-reaction to a typo. I’ll assume it was just a misunderstanding.
The original comment should have been “When has the LGBT community advocated for the simple act of getting married being considered a felony?” – as is the case in the poly community.
Please let us not get side tracked on to other issues here. This is about responding to one of the most commonly used weapons to police men and boys. Save this tangent you’re on for an open thread.
I commented specifically on the 25 points. Specifically. Then, I was personally attacked and insulted.
25 goals that can and should apply to women as much as men, and 25 inferences that men, in particular, need to be told this rather than women.
Just a big fat shame sandwich.
I have to agree
Much of this list is common sense, some of it commendable (changing a diaper), but sadly most of it is the same drivel that proves just how confused and lost men of today are. There is absolutely nothing wrong with machismo, but articles like this will tell you that there is. I am sorry Carlos but you cannot redefine the phrase “man up” as it is meant for hyper-masculine men like myself to use on men like you who would rather play pacifist than defender.
Despite what the vocal male feminist of the internet will have you believe, being a modern gentleman and a tough guy in your own right does not mean that you have to be a drooling troglodyte who doesn’t support the oppressed, doesn’t change diapers when it isn’t needed and doesn’t break up a fight. Men can be complex, and a modern man should be complex but lists like this does not advocate complexity; they advocate being a soft sub-man.
I would rather we keep the phrase “man up” the way it is, a phrase used on men who keep the tears on their face, hide behind their women’s skirts, and fight for everyone else’s rights but their fellow men whenever it will make them look good to the women watching. There is no reason to change the phrase, I love it the way it is.
“Advocate for Women: Standing up for your mama, sister, and niece, that’s the easy part. But what about that stranger your friend is ogling right now?
Support the LGBT Community: We’re so much better than belittling others for who they love or how they identify their gender.”
I have a problem with the very existence of this list. Men do need to better themselves but that starts with being supportive of men. Men don’t love themselves or each other like they used too. It as vital for men to do this as it was for women. The low self esteem we see in males today is a direct result of baby boomer men whole hog embracing some of the most radical and negative aspects of feminism without giving it serious thought. That’s why you see a man here telling men they are not good enough unless they are serving others while feminist go on telling women their only duty is to please themselves.
We need to be lead by brave men. Men who have enough courage to stand up for what they believe even when it’s unpopular. The men who depend on approval to function aren’t going to lead the next generation of men to a state of self determination. They can only teach men how to keep their head down.
Hi Ed. First sane comment in whole thread.
The only sane way to “redefine” idiom “man up” is to totally reject it and cauterize it as absurd and immoral. Since we released female from all and any duties toward male and society in general, no one has moral stand to pose some duties on male toward females and society in general.
You are male – you are man. Period. If some one comes and teach you – how you have “to be a man” – it means only one thing – he want to control and abuse you in favor of his own , or some one else (females).
Wiser words than Gomez’s
Now imagine “25 Ways to be a Better Woman” in Salon or the HuffPo…and the shit storm that would ensue. It’s always open season on men at the GMP. Scolding us like little boys, shaming us into submission to the idealized “devine feminine”.
If only we can convince men to behave more like women, egalitarian utopia will manifest and women will like and respect men again. Really?
What does it mean to “Woman-Up” and why aren’t women ever asked to do it?
26. Stand up for unborn children
27. Stand up for pedophiles
Is this for real? Twenty-five ways to feel guilty about being a man …
How on earth do you get from that list to “feel guilty about being a man”. “Lead with your heart” does that? Or maybe “Recognize that You Are Enough”?
Why do we always get these reactions when someone suggest things a man could do or think about?
It’s a list that systematically demeans men for not being more like an ideal woman. For more detailed critique, go to http://www.avoiceformen.com/misandry/25-ways-to-make-a-shame-sandwich/
Nobody should tell any man how to be a man or any woman how to be a woman (never heard anyone use the term “woman up”) yet here you are telling us that we shouldn’t be told how to act like men in one sentence and in the next you’re telling us how to behave like men.
Every man should know that being man is something each individual decides on his own terms. Other people don’t get to decide whether or not you’re manly enough, usually to their own benefit.
I agree. I think the only advice to really give is be true to yourself and try not to harm others.
You know, I was going to rail against the disgustingness of this bullshit, but then Paul Elam did it for me, and I’m feeling lazy, so: http://www.avoiceformen.com/misandry/25-ways-to-make-a-shame-sandwich/
Great post, Carlos.
The list, by its nature is patronizing. How do you address conflict when others are the aggressive ones? What do you do if your partner turns out to have a personality disorder? How do you deal with someone you thought loved you, but found out she was sleeping with someone else? This is glossy-eyed cultism that outlines some kind of utopia that for many does not exist.
I like the fact that I can follow the list and only change a diaper once. I can check that off my list as something that I did only once and never again and feel good about myself. I can avoid it for the rest of my life and still be a man. Hurray!
So basically check your balls, brain and spine in at the door and become a doormat?
I get why there’s animosity to such lists. Many of these I would just file under the category of “be a decent human being.” There’s something odd to me about telling male individuals to “man up” instead of “grow up.” I say odd, because masculinity or “manliness” is today also something that’s ridiculed and belittled, so what’s the point of telling men to seek a label that many others are denigrating? Better to tell someone to act “like a grown-up” than act “like a man.”
There are several places in the list where satisfying others seems to be the main goal, even independently of your own satisfaction. This makes the list sound like it’s a list of how to get other people to like you, or what you owe the rest of society. Why not a list of things that are in your own self-interest AND in the interest of others?
Take cooking, for example. As mentioned on the list, the pleasure of cooking could be from seeing someone’s face light up when you serve them your food. But, how about the self-satisfaction that comes with a feeling of self-sufficiency? Being able to cook for yourself is just as important a grown-up skill as trying to please someone else’s tastes.
I would argue that “being a man” depends largely on being self-sufficient and self-assured, NOT on making sure that others feel good enough about you to give you permission to call yourself a man.
Pragmatically, this is a great list for getting a lot of women fans. If I wrote under my real name, I would definitely produce a list like this one.