Ozy Frantz introduces us to award-winning slam poet Guante, and his opinions on the phrase “Man up.”
This article originally appeared at No Seriously, What About Teh Menz?
I recently found this brilliant piece by Guante, a hip-hop artist and two-time National Poetry Slam champion, and felt like sharing it with everyone.
Transcript from his website below.
1. Fuck you.
2. If you want to question my masculinity, like a schoolyard circle of curses, like a swordfight with lightsaber erections, save your breath. Because contrary to what you may believe, not every problem can be solved by “growing a pair.” You can’t arm-wrestle your way out of chemical depression. The CEO of the company that just laid you off does not care how much you bench. And I promise, there is no lite beer in the universe full-bodied enough to make you love yourself.
3. Man up? Oh that’s that new superhero, right? Mild-mannered supplement salesman Mark Manstrong says the magic words “MAN UP,” and then transforms into THE FIVE O’CLOCK SHADOW, the massively-muscled, deep-voiced, black-leather-duster-wearing superhero who defends the world from, I don’t know, feelings.
4. See I don’t drink a lot of beer… you know, because I’m not a “real man,” but I’m pretty sure that, of all the beers in the world, Miller Lite… is not the most flavorful brew. It kind of tastes like… whatever insecure jackass wrote these “man up” commercials got rejected by a beautiful, no-nonsense bartender, drank a six pack of REAL beer alone in his apartment, and then Miller bottled his tears.
5. You ever notice how nobody ever says “woman up?” They just imply it. Because women and the women’s movement figured out a long time ago that being directly ordered around by commercials, magazines and music is dehumanizing. When will men figure that out?
6. “Man Up” assaults our self esteem by suggesting that competence and perseverance are uniquely masculine traits. That women—not to mention any man who doesn’t eat steak, drive a pickup truck, have lots of sex with women and otherwise conform to gender norms absolutely—are nothing more than, background characters and props in a movie where the strong, stoic, REAL man is the hero. More than anything, though, it suggests that to be yourself—whether you, wear skinny jeans, listen to Lady Gaga, rock a little eyeliner, drink some other brand of light beer, or write poetry—will cost you.
7. How many boys have to kill themselves before this country acknowledges the problem? How many women have to be abused? How many trans people have to get assaulted? We teach boys how to wear the skin of a man, but we also teach them how to raise that skin like a flag and draw blood for it.
8. Boy babies get blue socks. Girl babies get pink socks. What about purple? What about orange, yellow, chartreuse, cerulean, black, tie-dyed, buffalo plaid, rainbow… there are so many beautiful colors and combinations of colors. Yet boy babies get blue socks. And girl babies get pink socks.
9. I want to be free, to express myself. Man up. I want to have meaningful, emotional relationships with other men. Man up. I want to be weak sometimes. Man up. I want to be strong in a way that isn’t about physical power or dominance. Man up. I want to cry if I feel like crying. Man up. I want to ask for help. Man up. I want to be who I am. Man up.
10. No.
About ozyfrantz
We were at a work birthday party having cake. I work out religiously and watch what I eat so I asked for a small slice. This obese woman I work with asked me if I was watching “my girlish figure” and told me to eat a full piece like a man. It was so fucking ludicrous I wasn’t even angry. I just ate my small piece and left quietly. Apparently “real men” gorge themselves on cake.
Yes we do, but can you blame us? Cake is delicious!!!
I’ll guess it’s best to be yourself.
I am sorry, I laugh hysterically when this type of manipulative talk is tossed around. I am sorry try being anything BUT a white male in this country and then boo-who about the phrase “man-up.” First of all, it doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s what you take from it. Hell I asked a girlfriend not to long ago and said, “Man up and just tell me if you are mad.” It has nothing to do with some machismo ideal of men…but rather a compliment, a term of endearment to the sex, complimenting one of its good points and “man” isn’t saying “male” but rather man in the way that the constitution says, “All MEN are created equal.” It’s simply saying HUMAN up, embrace your HUMANITY and be BRAVE. As a woman if I adopt any quality of a man, even so much as a refer to myself as a tomboy I am sexist against my own race…so with that logic when using the phrase “man up” which to me is the equivalent of “be all that you can be” or “hold yourself to a higher stander” you are doing the opposite. No one can emasculate someone, gender is a social construct. Therefor with that being none insecurity about your sex comes from your own internalized sexism and everything else is projecting. I remember saying once to a pathologically flaky friend to man up and just tell me he didn’t want to hang out. He took offensive just like this article but I found it to be manipulative and that I was being misunderstood. I didn’t mean man like in a machismo sense but rather in the sense that MAN is the adult form of a male and I was expecting him to act like an adult. Yes now I wish I would of used a different word but that’s what it is. When people say MAN UP they are asking males to stop acting like boys or children when they should be acting like adults.
“I didn’t mean man like in a machismo sense but rather in the sense that MAN is the adult form of a male and I was expecting him to act like an adult. Yes now I wish I would of used a different word but that’s what it is. When people say MAN UP they are asking males to stop acting like boys or children when they should be acting like adults.”
Wow bro. You really bent over backwards to try to prove that “man up” is a phrase used equally for men and women and actually refers to “human up!” I’ll admit I laughed a little
But then in your last sentence you admitted exactly what it is, a phrase used to shame men into acting “like adults,” where “adult” can be defined however the accuser wants. It’s shaming language, bro.
“gender is a social construct.”
Hmmm, interesting. I must have missed that scientific paper that showed that Y chromosomes are functionally the same as X chromosomes, and that testosterone performs the same biological functions as estrogen.
As far as taking offense, getting defensive, being insecure, yeah, those are some weak qualities in any human, and yes, especially for males. Damned social constructs.
Man up is a manipulation, it is usually used to attempt to coerce a man into doing what a woman wants. When a man refuses, attempted shaming techniques include trying to make his refusal appear infantile rather than the choice of an adult.
I vote for Answer number 1. Every time.
It is not meant to make him appear infantile or not be the action of an adult. It is clearly meant to make him feel emasculated, weak, scared, in short, a woman.
“Man up is a manipulation, it is usually used to attempt to coerce a man into doing what a woman wants.”
What is it when a man says it to another man?
Still manipulation, although I wouldn’t characterise it as coercing men into doing what women want so much as into performing their assigned gender role. Both genders pressure both genders into conforming.
I’m in a first option kind of mood. Being a man in the 21st century almost requires number one as the go to response. We are up to our eyeballs in liars, manipulators, and destroyers. You come at me and you’ve got to prove who you are. Otherwise save it for the next chuckle head down the road.
It’s a lot more than just beer commercials or single guy friends that needs to be fought.
There are many legal barriers to men performing the female gender role.
In a country where (post divorce) family court enforces that most men cannot expect to parent their own children if the mother doesn’t wish it, we simultaneously have women who can become CEO’s, judges, astronauts. Women are setting and breaking many barriers (more woman in the workforce, women are 60% of those enrolled in college, women earn 200,000 more bachelor degrees per year, the list goes on and on), fathers get primary custody 6% to mothers 80% and the rate has been frozen for the last 40 years.
For a long time we have heard the mantra that “women’s issues are everybody’s issues”. It’s time for that paradigm to be flipped and state that “men’s issues are everybody’s issues” too.
This article is great, but quite frankly it’s the systemic legal bias that most hurts men not the smearing. Look at the extremely biased Affordable Care Act which has billions of dollars worth of set-asides for women only, even though men’s health is much less cared for already.
Men are now where women were 40 years ago in terms of legal protections of their rights. Quite frankly beer commercials and other things the article talks about are probably 99th on my list of men’s issues.
I think the two go hand in hand. While shaming tactics and negative media portrayal of men may only be an annoyance to adults, it fucking destroys young boys.
I make that point all the time. THere is not one commerical where a woman makes the wrong choice, men are always portrayed as the idiot who couldn’t figure out the right dryer/car/cable service you name it. Women routinely talk down to them like they are idiots, Is it a conincidence that the ratio of male-female suicides has jumped from 2-1 to 4-1 in 40 years? I mentioned this to a female friend and she blew it off with ‘men are more violent’.
“Is it a conincidence that the ratio of male-female suicides has jumped from 2-1 to 4-1 in 40 years? I mentioned this to a female friend and she blew it off with ‘men are more violent’.”
Anyone who even dared saying something like that would definitely not be talking to me ever again
According to one doctor(sorry, I can’t recall his name) who wrote a book called ‘Dying to be Men’, the suicide rate is actually around 12-1 ! He estimates 80 men per day kill themselves! soceitys reaction, meh.
“In a country where (post divorce) family court enforces that most men cannot expect to parent their own children if the mother doesn’t wish it”
And cannot expect to have the child they conceived live if the mother does not wish it.
And cannot expect to NOT have their child born or otherwise renounce that same child if the mother does not wish it, a basic right granted by Roe V Wade i.e the right to decide how to use one’s own body and not be forced into indentured servitude (the very wording used by one of the judges but apparently carrying a baby against her wishes for 9 months does fall under that rubric but laboring for 18 years does not)
And cannot expect if they have been lied to about their paternity but took the womans word on faith and find out differently after committing financial and emotional resources while foregoing other choices/options in their life (again the very underpinning of Roe V Wade) to be released from their ‘obligation’ to that child nor expect any compensation for the theft of their time, money and life.
Women use the phrase ‘take care of his baby’ whenever they are referring to some hold on the man’s money. At no other time do they or the state consider the child the man’s; women kill men’s babies without notice or consent, women have men’s babies without their knowledge and never inform them (not a crime!), women do so and then show up in 10 years and demand support while controlling access and do not suffer penalties for keeping ‘the man’s baby’ from him, women get custody or shared custody 90% of the time of ‘the man’s baby’ in divorces they initiate75% of the time, women don’t tell one man they had ‘his baby’ while telling another man it is ‘his baby’ because they want the latter one’s resources and in the process steal one man’s baby, steal another man’s life and deprive child of knowing it’s real father and when the house of cards collapses cause massive emotional damage to three people including ‘the man’s baby’ without a single repercussion (in fact the only person who suffers a repercussion is the man who was defrauded who amazingly is forced under penalty of jail to keep supporting the child that isn’t ‘his’)
Number 1 is always the right response when “Man Up” equals:
1. Capitulate and get married
2. Get a job and work 60 hour weeks
3. With that money you toil for you are to buy that house with the white picket fence and a Land Rover for the wife
4. Max out that credit card when Valentine’s Day rolls around so she can say “He went to Jared!”
5. Accept it when she gets bored and leaves you, and takes your possessions and your kids along with her.
6. Repeat cycle as many times as possible until you die.
I’m in my 30′s. I’m in good financial shape. I’m good looking. I’ve never married and I never will. I come to these types of sites for amusement and to try to help gullible young men avoid the pitfalls of marriage. Live life. Don’t “Man Up”.
Well put brother! I’m in the same “boat” as you and oddly enough, I never feel the need to make sure I have a life jacket.
You 2 guys represent the ‘New Wave’ of Manhood. You’ve seen Women gain ‘rights’ without responsibility and watched men lose rights while gaining responsibilities. And you’ve chosen to ‘opt out’. Can’t say I blame you as it certainly seems the ‘smart move’.
On the average, good advice, however:
1) Marriage CAN be your choice too
2) Straight up tell her right away you intend to work 40 hours and have a life, any woman that raises the slightest objection to your ambitions for work-life balance is a non-starter
3) Hell No.
4) If you got this far, you already fucked up big time
5) Fight. Fight Hard, Fight Dirty, make it as hard as possible, bring extended family pressure to bear, do whatever it takes.
“Number 1 is always the right response when “Man Up” equals:
1. Capitulate and get married
2. Get a job and work 60 hour weeks
3. With that money you toil for you are to buy that house with the white picket fence and a Land Rover for the wife
4. Max out that credit card when Valentine’s Day rolls around so she can say “He went to Jared!”
5. Accept it when she gets bored and leaves you, and takes your possessions and your kids along with her.
6. Repeat cycle as many times as possible until you die.
I’m in my 30′s. I’m in good financial shape. I’m good looking. I’ve never married and I never will. I come to these types of sites for amusement and to try to help gullible young men avoid the pitfalls of marriage. Live life. Don’t “Man Up”.
Response:
1. True
2. This might work. Then you get married and her sweet side disappears, especially when she’s not getting the routine spa days and free time to spend with her other b*tchy friends at Starbucks when she should be working.
3. See point 2.
4. You f’d up already by “putting a ring on it” in the first place.
5. You can fight as hard and as dirty as you want, but the bottom line is the U.S. has a corrupt family court system that swings way in the favor of the woman. Not only do you lose your possessions and your kids, but to add insult to injury you pay for your ex’s lawyer too!
Ask yourself how many happily married couples you know. Marriage is an institution designed for the benefit of women from beginning to end. It’s the day that young women dream about and young men dread but do it anyway because of societal pressure and tradition. Just don’t do it. If you’re exploring it, you owe it to yourself to at least visit a Mens Rights Activists web site before you jump off that cliff.
“5. You can fight as hard and as dirty as you want, but the bottom line is the U.S. has a corrupt family court system that swings way in the favor of the woman. Not only do you lose your possessions and your kids, but to add insult to injury you pay for your ex’s lawyer too!”
I really don’t understand how anyone can argue against this cold hard reality. But they continue to try to convince us young men that we’re just being paranoid. It’s so insane it would be almost funny if it wasn’t so cruel.
I already jumped off that cliff, going on 8 years ago.
It is super important to get to know the woman you are going to marry/cohabitate with, especially where I live, I know, but some men don’t want to play the field forever. In my case, I hate dating (its a great way to spend a lot of time with women that you otherwise wouldn’t choose to) and in Canada if you stay unmarried and live with a woman the government graciously goes ahead and marries you anyway under common law. This is why I say that the advice above is good, assuming certain conditions, but there are men for whom it will not be acceptable, and those men need a plan to minimize risk in marriage.
As far as I can tell, your best bet on not ending up married to a woman who will selfishly gut an entire family on a whim, is to not date them either. First sign of princess syndrome and you move on. Also, don’t marry overnight, give it a good long 2-3 year test period. If you are buying stuff to make her happy you can hardly be surprised that stuff will entice her to get rid of you.
Bam. Great comment.
Marry me, John D. Oh wait.
8)
Why is the conversation limited to thinking ludicrous statements like “man up” have to be limited to observations based on dumb t.v. commercials? Besides, young people think a certain way but older people have more life experiences and can give a different perspective. However, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS keep in mind that it is NOT a crime to be young. The occupy movement has shown us that. Working together in albeit limited (where applicable) confines will do nothing but lift all of our lives to a new level of understanding. If you want to “screw” anything all of us should occasionally say “screw” the generation gap: Lets work together and solve this thing.
If you’re obsessed with making sure you’re a man, then you are not really a man, because you are not really functioning as an adult. If someone saying “grow a pair” has an effect on you, then you need to GROW up, not “man up”. Telling someone to “man up” is not any more sophisticated than saying “I triple dog dare you.” (See _A Christmas Story_ for the effects of such dares.)
“If someone saying “grow a pair” has an effect on you”
Eh, I get what you’re saying but an insult is an insult is a threat is a challenge. If someone disrespects me, I’m going to feel disrespected. No it’s not more sophisticated, it’s more insulting.
No denying that an insult feels insulting. I’m suggesting that a man’s anger at feeling disrespected can also be manipulated. It’s just as easy to manipulate as insecurity about one’s masculinity. If you tell me that you have to respond to every act of disrespect, then I’ve found a very convenient button to push.
I don’t think you have to respond to every act of disrespect but if someone is insulting you it’s probably still going to have an effect on you. It’s probably not gonna feel great even if you know what they’re saying is stupid.
That doesn’t make you less of an adult. It means you have feelings that can be hurt.
Haha Beer. I get shit all the time for not drinking it. Its not manly seeing as it’s a scientific fact that it increases estrogen levels in the body. What man in his right mind would drink estrogen in a bottle?
omg beer increases estrogen levels?
So does cannabis. As does excess dietary carbohydrate, by causing excess body fat, which is definitely estrogenic.
Pot + beer + SAD (standard american diet) = manboobs. Actually, only 2 of the three needed.
So beer is now a woman’s drink? Okay. Thanks, that’s more beer for me. Bring on the Guinness!
Just wait until you read the studies about plastic food containers mimicking estrogen…. I’d put down that plastic water bottle if I were you.
Actually, body fat stores estrogen in both men and women. A man putting on fat is putting on estrogen. (In a way, my man boobs are not entirely man boobs….) So, I’m wondering how much it’s the beer that’s doing it and how much it could be the weight gain from drinking beer.
I forgot the best response to someone telling you to “man up”:
*insert request for fellatio here*
But it is all part and parcel of women getting to decide when men should ‘act like men’ and when they shouldn’t. Basically when a) it is dangerous or b) the check comes. I’ve had women say ‘be a man’ when it comes to speaking up to the waiter, giving up a seat, or walking a woman home I don’t even know (presumably putting my life and limb on the line for her).
Women routinely say “I want a man who acts like a man and knows how to treat a woman the way she deserves to be treated” yet if a man said “I want a woman who acts like a woman and treats a man the way he deserves to be treated” he’d be skewered.
I was at a small bar near me where seats are at a premium and was waiting for two seats with a friend for awhile. Finally the people got up to leave and these two girls literally tried to push us out of the way, the kind of thing that would have led to a fist fight if they were men. In any event we stood our ground and sat down and only then did they revert to ‘man up’ (since THEIR manning up failed) and one girl said to me “you wouldn’t let a lady sit down??” and as I continued to rest my ass in the seat looked over my shoulder at her and said “I certainly would” and then ignored her.
“Man up’ goes hand in hand with another popular sentiment that SNL jokingly referred to as ‘Women Great, Men Suck’ and it basically is applied to any situation to either castigate men or forgive women.
If you point out to any woman that almost every single important invention in this world was created by men, they will invariably point out that women are just as responsible for them because a) they were the mothers and wives and b) men could never had done it without them and c) women have been ‘kept down’ so couldn’t invent anything but if they hadn’t been would have and d) women really invented many of those things but men took credit.
Now on the other hand when it comes to war, imperialism, colonialism, genocide, and all the other things that gave us our various civilizations that is naturally all laid at the feet of men. Weren’t women the wives and mothers of those men? Wern’t they kept down so they couldn’t do those same things and woudln’t they if they had the chance? Werent’ they really responsbile for many of the wars and atrocities that men took credit for?
The truly amazing thing is that women are able to claim equal credit for the great things men did and demands a share of it and renounce the horrible things they did but still demand a share of that as well.
You mean you just noticed that? You must be very young, I’ve been seeing that for over 50 years!
Duffman says a lot of things. Oh yeah!
11. “I’ll man up when you woman up, barefoot & preggo in my kitchen. Until then, I’m an unfenced, free-range man.” This is specifically a response to the man-up & get married ultimatum.
As for any other type of “man up” exhortational emotional manipulation, the exhorter can pound sand.
“A man who is more concerned with being a good man than being good at being a man makes a very well-behaved slave.”
~Jack Donovan
“A man who is more concerned with being a good man than being good at being a man makes a very well behaved slave”. That is without a doubt the most insightful comment I have read ! I’m writing that down right now to save it!
10 is by far my favorite answer. You have no idea how much this meant to me right now. I just spent the last several years giving my mother care that no-one else in the family was able or willing to give so that she could stay home during her process. Now as we reach the end of that process, I’m basically told the same type of thing from my sisters when I ask about what kind of support I’m going to get when the times comes for me to move on to the next phase of my life. After she’s gone and I am no longer of use in the same capacity, as a caregiver. She even said “no-one asked you to do this”, to which my only possible reply was… “no-one had to”.
Something something “pull up your bootstraps”, something something “man up” something something “yourself together”. So yes, a little of number one, a little of number 10 and the chips will fall where they might. I’ve always been a survivor. Not sure how they’re going to sleep next year. Me? Like a baby.
Thank you.