What about all the men who go about their business, doing a daily job, working every day just because that’s what needs to be done?
Masculinity has a bad reputation. If you define it in a certain way, masculinity is the cause of most, and possibly all, of the world’s problems. That list routinely includes war, violence against women, the sex trade, and pornography. It may also include poverty and drug use, if you define masculinity in just the right way.
I’ve never been convinced that masculinity is all bad or that it’s the root of all evil; that’s always seemed like too simple of an answer to those complex problems. And if masculinity gets all the credit for the bad stuff, shouldn’t it also get credit for the good stuff that’s happened too? Men also developed democracy, stood for nonviolent conflict, and created some of our most amazing art. Isn’t that part of masculinity?
For me, one of the best and most beneficial parts of masculinity focuses on strength of character and perseverance. We teach boys and men to be decisive and resolute, to choose a plan of action and carry it out, whether that plan takes seconds or years. We rarely talk about this as part of masculinity. In Stiffed, Susan Faludi traced it to the World War II writing of reporter Ernie Pyle who emphasized and celebrated GIs for being “quietly useful.”
It’s the masculinity of the “little guy” or the “everyday Joe.” It’s about going to a glory-less job every day because you have to have the paycheck, whether you’re supporting just yourself or your entire family. Even when that job is wretched or you feel wretched, because not going to work means not getting paid, and that’s not acceptable.
It’s about doing a job because it needs to be done, even though it won’t bring any glory or recognition. That description is often used when it’s a matter of national “need” or national “service,” but it’s just as relevant when it’s about taking care of one’s home. How often do any of us really want to mow the lawn, recaulk the tub, clean, or do the grocery shopping? No glory in any of that. Yet those tasks are all necessary and make our individual lives a little better or easier, in one way or another.
At some point, a decision was made that this was the way to make money. We stick with it, for better or for worse. For most guys, liking a job is irrelevant. And for most people, changing careers is not an option; the loss of pay for starting over won’t allow it.
Do guys occasionally grumble about any and all of this? Yes, absolutely. Do we also understand that the job has to get done? Yes, absolutely. We’ve made our decision, and we’re going to carry it out as long as necessary and as long as we can.
Most guys know they’re never going to get the glory or public recognition that goes to a Colin Powell, Eli Manning, or Stephen King. When recognition comes, we’re often not quite sure how to respond; we say “anyone could do it” or “I was just doing my job.” Especially when that recognition seems out of proportion to what we do day in and day out, perhaps because the recognition only comes every 10 or 20 years.
The recognition is important though. As boys, we’re taught to do. We believe that we’ll be recognized, loved, and honored by the people around us for doing what needs to be done. For being quietly useful.
—Photo xavi talleda/Flickr
I don’t know if this is praising men’s usefulness or quietness. It’s true that men don’t generally speak up for themselves until things get really bad, but that’s not necessarily good.
Thanks-a-mundo for the blog article.Really thank you! Keep writing.
I didn’t read this article as a commentary on the overall positioning of men and women in the larger society. I read it as a commentary on the de-valuation of the “everyday joe” in the larger society. We love special interest groups. We admire brilliance. We in turn pity and excuse incompetance. But the guy that goes to the factory everyday, comes home every evening, opens a beer, reads a book to his kids, puts them to bed and then figures out with his wife which one of the bills isn’t gonna happen this month is pretty invisible. This vision… Read more »
Well said.
Agreed. Nicely said Natalie.
Lovely piece. Doing what must be done is an often unsung virtue. Thanks for singing about it for a bit.
Thanks for the comments y’all. My goal was to write a few paragraphs about something that many people consider to be part of the definition of what it means to be a good man. For one day, I just wanted to talk about men without comparing them to women, arguing about who’s got it better/worse, etc.
Well said. I’m not sure I agree that “hard working” is some innate quality of men, so much as something human. But I’d agree that its a quality many men embody.
Hi Peter. I agree that hard working is not an innate quality of men; anyone can be hard working. But I do think it is a quality that many men embody.
TRU
Riddle me this, all the modern conveniences and things that made your life safe and easy today, from your bed to your shelter to your jobs that pays you to the roads that brought you there to the machine that you are tying on, to the people you will call it breaks down … the entire infrastructure you live inside, how much of it was put there by a women?
edit – by women.
The point being, perhaps the extend to which you are being taken care of is invisible to you because you have never known it any other way.
Check your privilege.
A great question and one is love to see a fair answer to. Stats onomen in factories during the industrial revolution and during war WW2. Admin staff during the 40s through 70s . Can’t get raids built without typed contacts! The point is women have always worked and have always contributed to the whole, just like men. Perhaps indifferent ways but still both have contributed
Then if women are as responsible for the good in the world as men, are they not as responsible for the bad?
I don’t see why not. Here are the Top Ten Evil Women. An easy google search brought it up.
http://listverse.com/2007/09/09/top-10-most-evil-women/
I don’t think I’ve ever said on this site, or anywhere else, that women were pure white light and men were deadly dark. I have some pretty difficult women in my own life.
It goes further than that, Julie. Factory workers in those days could not live without women’s work, either at home or in boarding houses. It’s the same collaboration as always going back before the agricultural revolution. Women didn’t invent democracy, but they invented beer. That’s an even trade by my lights!
And we may never truly know what women invented in other cultures, given so much history has been destroyed during conquests. I do think men and women, well, we’ve been together forever yeah? So I think it’s fair to say we all created this world together.
Conquests usually happened for a reason, I can’t think of an example of an invasion perpetrated for the lulz.
Yep, I’d agree. Any argument framing men as angels or devils is flawed. Would you agree that along with women’s desire to have equal access to privileges that had been uniquely male, they should also have access to equal responsibility? I’ve yet to see a female bin collector (although I have seen two taxi-women).
It’s not a good comparison because inventors can be extreme people so it’s not like you are answering a question about the general intelligence of men vs women. No more than noting that most mentally deficient people are men. But some have pointed out that for ten thousand years women were in charge of textile manufacture and basically never made any technological progress except the spinning wheel replacing the distaff around the 11th century AD… until men came along and invented stuff in the 19th century. The spinning Jenny was invented by a guy who said he did it because… Read more »
I suppose there really were some freeloaders throughout history though. The question is, why do people get all bent out of shape – well women anyway – with such a reasonable observation if you then add, “and some were women!!” Or let us say for the sake of argument that the feminist view of history that has an unending procession of horrors done by men to women is true — why should that mean that men today are guilty, since they have done none of that and even suffer the other way around? Actually I can understand men being defensive… Read more »
Well, I think it’s because the first comment by Man in response to TRU made it sound like women were basically freeloaders living off the backs of men. Which may be true in certain cases. But it may also be a bit ahistorical considering how much work just plain living took out of everyone, gender roles notwithstanding. it’s not saying men didn’t build things, it’s saying women did too. I have no idea the percentage of women who participated in the building of the infrastructure we now enjoy. And I’m not sure how we’d even track it given that there… Read more »
Well said, both of you. I suspect the “women are freeloaders” thing is a defensive reaction to the equally ridiculous “men are responsible for all evil” thing. Unfortunately that particular meme (the second one) passes for journalism these days. I’ve no problem with attributing equal responsibility for historical achievements to men and women as a group, even if only from the point of view that every inventor was supported by a vast society of other humans, so long as we also recognise the influence gender roles are still having on us. -Many women still feel that their first duty is… Read more »
Yes. This.
What I say is that if we can’t figure out if men or women are better off in our own culture that we LIVE IN then it’s absurd to try and guess the same equation for cultures we have almost no idea about be they in the past or in foreign countries in the modern world. But having said that much of the assurance that feminists have in their theory of male privilege is based on exactly those unknowable cultures — they are sure women were worse off in the past and in foreign cultures like Afghanistan. You can’t even… Read more »
Right, stats on eras when men were either giving their lives to protect others (often unwillingly) or were most commonly employed as a slightly intelligent beast of burden. I don’t look down on the contribution women have made down through the years, but we still live in a society where men are disproportionately represented doing the jobs noone else wants to do.
Oh great, yet more bullshit about how all the women in this world have the option of ether working for a living or sitting around on their asses eating bonbons and letting men do the work for them, while men have never had any choice but to work and support women. Guess what, guys: many of us women have never had any option other than to work and support ourselves. We’ve had to quietly go about doing the work that needed to be done, JUST LIKE YOU. I know that when I turned a certain age, I didn’t put a… Read more »
You’ve missed the point. Women have not been said to be the cause of everything bad on the planet as have men.
The point is, yeah, men have done / do some bad stuff but do a lot of good things too, the vast majority of which seldom if ever gets acknowledged.;
There are libraries filled with books written by men, named after men. There are galleries funded by men filled with art by men, how could you think that men aren’t acknowlledged for their good works?
Women have done plenty of bad things in the history of this planet. And good things. Just like men.
The historical predominance of men in cultural works shouldn’t be framed as male privilege, unless you’re also willing to acknowledge the oppression and lack of recognition of the majority of male authors and artists. The truth is that some men were privileged, as were some women, most people were exactly the opposite.
Yes the Frontman Fallacy.
I just plain give up. I do. I can say, over and over and over again that I think men got a raw deal. That I believe women rape. That I believe men are, and have been abused. That deep in my very heart I fear that all human kind is just one big monstrous evil, and it doesn’t matter. No matter how supportive I might be, I’m always guilty of something. And I suppose that’s your point isn’t it. That women treat men that way. In which case, when does it stop? At what point do the sneetches just… Read more »
You’re OK Julie.
As far as I’m concerned you don’t have to do anything more. But at the same time there is a little more you might need to hear.
Oh hey what do you think of this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp8tToFv-bA&feature=related
I am OK David Byron. I know that. I’m quite amazing actually. Not that who I or who you could ever be fully expressed here on this blog. If we met in a coffeeshop or pub there is a very likely chance we’d talk for hours and enjoy ourselves. I mean I think. I don’t know. You might dislike me terribly. But at least we’d have a whiskey or a beer out of it. And duh, of course there is more I need to hear. About a lot of things. Like other issues affecting the planet besides gender, for one… Read more »
You *are* amazing. 🙂 I just didn’t think you’d take that coming from me so I just said you’re OK, which you are too. Pitched it a bit too low maybe? I meant more “You’re OK by me. We’re good.” I’d be glad to praise you some more if you want… um… I already said you had nice shoes, right? Are you OK today? Twenty thousand kids will die of hunger related diseases today but that’s twenty thousand fewer than would have died 40 years ago. Wars, civil wars, genocide and so on are all down. Down by a lot.… Read more »
Getting sick with some virus. Tired out from lots of rehearsing, theater etc. Thank you for responding, I really do appreciate it, David. We are making the world better, David and I’m glad we’ve found a place where people are trying to do it together, even if things are still difficult. You’ve taught me a lot.
Well I thought I had replied here before I left this morning in a bit of a rush but evidently it did not go through?
What about original sin? Eve ate the apple, not Adam… Not that I believe this at all, and I’m saying this a little tongue-in-cheek, not trying to start a flame war of any kind (there’s room on GMP for a sense of humor, after all!). I have heard **some** Christians use that argument to defend the position of women as subservient or inferior to men, or why women can’t be ordained in certain denominations, etc. So there’s at least one worldview out there that does blame women for all the evil in the world, even if it’s not a particularly… Read more »
“Oh, and while you’re at it, guys, please don’t pat yourselves on the backs too hard for inventing “democracy, creating great art, etc. You have no idea what some women would have done had they not spent the bulk of their lives cleaning up after you and caring for the children.” Some women. But the exact same number of women as men had the leisure it took to create democracy and all that. Your kind of woman, and man, was waiting on them hand and fott just like thier male counterparts. And yes indeed, their men held them back –… Read more »
I suspect there are countless “little” contributions to art, science, and politics that go unnoticed in the annals of history. For every great painter and sculptor there were people supporting him, sometimes literally helping him carve marble. In order to really know why women didn’t go out and take over the world we might need to travel back in time. Were women in the 1850’s able/encouraged to attend university? How many men were, come to think of it. If those few men had more access to education and their wealthy female counterparts weren’t, makes sense that the women wouldn’t be… Read more »
I don’t think anyone is trying to argue some kind of supremecist “men are better” theory. A tiny minority of men made up almost all of the movers and shakers of history because men had the opportunity to. But its also important to recognise that they didn’t have the opportunity *not* to, men were defined in terms of their ability to do great things, so more of them tried and even more of them failed. Equally, its a null argument that I can associate myself with the inventor of electricity or vaccination simply because we share similar genitalia. But by… Read more »
“Others never had any choice. Sojourner Truth was a good example of that kind. To this day her words ring true:“That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much… Read more »
Kinda sucks to hear your entire gender get run down… doesn’t it?
You hit the nail on the head: Female privilege has only ever belonged to a certain class of women. The same is also true of male privilege: only a tiny portion of the male population in any era have ever actually been privileged in terms of their gender. There’s some privileges that run across social classes, increasingly so in first world countries, but I almost never hear a feminist commentator point out that “male privilege” is in fact “a select few males privilege.” I also hear depressingly few feminist commentators attack female privilege where it does exist and male oppression… Read more »
I think about privilege a great deal, even more know since I’ve been looking at new frames for it. I agree that only a tiny portion of the population have had the privilege of wealth and I can see how in generations past it would have been small groups that had any rights at all. Slight derail for an example. When I think about the experience male privilege today I guess I”m thinking about something more subtle. I’ll use an example that may or may hot highlight what I’m talking about. Recently, on Reddit in an atheist subreddit, a girl… Read more »
“Men don’t expect to be harrassed/virtually catcalled online. Women do.” We don’t? My experience of online communities with any degree of anonymity is that everyone gets trolled, especially if you post a picture or in any way reveal your identity. Incidentally, why are you assuming that all the harassers are male? And that if a man were harassed online it would only be by another man? I also remember reading a commentary on that thread (I think we’re talking about the same one), as I recall the commentator grouped “men’s rights” in with “women beating” as “things that make me… Read more »
just that default experience is male But you have no idea if that is true or not. You’re just expressing a prejudice. Feminists are certainly very prejudiced and are always reaffirming their own view to themselves but that doesn’t make any difference at all. So you bring up as some sort of “typical” example an experience that neither of us have experienced from some foreign subculture of which we know nothing. That is not evidence. That is just prejudice. As you say for all you know the men are treated the same or worse, or there exist other subcultures where… Read more »
And my post was purely to describe something that I see fitting in the bounds of what is usually called “male privilege” Kind of a translation. Feel free to disagree with it obviously, but that’s the kind of thing I see.
Feminists tend to see things which are not there because they only ever bother to look from one direction. They are not interested in truth but only in finding semi-plausible justifications for attacking men. A complete analysis of this incident would have to ask for example WHY do women get cat called and men not? That would lead to a discussion of the fact men get stuck having to do all the initiations in dating which in turn is at women’s option because they have the power in sexual relations. In short would women want to swap positions with men?… Read more »
Thats a very broad assertion to make about feminists, and to be honest could be equally levelled at masculists. Not that I argue that some, or possibly even most, feminists don’t do this, but it would be a little more accurate, and a lot less inflammatory not to attribute that view to all feminists.
I don’t really care if it is true of a few MRAs because they have zero power.
Well there you are DB!
I don’t have time to answer fully. Being catcalled, in my opinion is not a privilege. Being cat called does not mean you are necessarily attractive. It often means people just want to fuck with you cause they are bored. Or you are walking down the street.
Sometimes women get catcalled that they are fat or ugly. Being commented on is not privliege.
More later. I’d rather be ugly than treated how that girl was treated.
“A complete analysis of this incident would have to ask for example WHY do women get cat called and men not? ” This would be a good analyis. Are the men cat calling because it’s a way to make a first move, it’s a way to screw with someone as they are walking own the street, they are bored, etc. I have never been catcalled as a way to get asked out. I’ve been honked at while I ran at the lake. I’ve had spanish slur words hurled at me while walking (no asking out there). I’ve had friends out… Read more »
To recap: you said that the cat-calling thing was an example of male privilege. In view of how you’ve been feeling recently I really ought to have recognised that it is a good answer. I didn’t and that was a mistake. I like it as an answer. It’s the sort of answer that I get from women feminists who have really tried to think about it all. I don’t get many but I’ve had a few. Enough that I can tell a fake answer from a real one so I appreciate this. But I made the mistake of just starting… Read more »
When I was a teenager to early twenties — I used to go out for bike rides and count the number of times I’d get cat-called in a day. I believe my all time high was 30 in one bike ride, and I think I was age 16 at the time. I know it was right before I went off to college. The problem wasn’t with the cat-calling itself. The problem was that I was using that to form my identity of myself. The fact that I counted them — counted them! meant I was chalking them up as *proof*… Read more »
That’s spot on Lisa. If you don’t get cat called does that mean one is ugly? I have a memory of 7th grade where the boys decided (I think it was the boys, who knows) that Fridays were “Grab Ass Day.” They’d go round trying to grab girls asses. Which was sort of horrible if you got grabbed, but also more horrible if you didn’t. Because it meant your ass was….not grabbable? I found out years later that no one grabbed my ass (which I took at the time to mean I was hideous) because they were scared to death… Read more »
I went to all boys schools so even if I could recall anything of my childhood I’d have nothing to say from experience there. But it sounds like the boys (those participating) made an evaluational of the girls to guess which would be unhappy with being “grabbed” and they (correctly) figured you wouldn’t want to be. It also sounds like while you were signaling you didn’t want to participate, other girls signaled they wanted to. But no girls would explicitly say they wanted to be grabbed or not so the participating boys would be forced to guess? That sounds a… Read more »
Most women are blind to the extent that they are looked after and to the extent that men are regarded as human doings rather than human beings, see Nealy Steinberg list of 20 things that she loves about men, it was really a list of things that men do for her and make her life more comfortable and easy. I think a far greater challenge in gender equality than any facing men, is women examining and letting go of these this privilege and becoming as useful as men but the womens movement is extremely resistant to recognizing female privilege. Another… Read more »
Are you trying to argue women aren’t proving themselves to be useful, even though we make up a little over half the workforce now? Or are you arguing this believing that the jobs we dominate are useless? I would say any woman who works is posing a form of independence, which would be a lot of women in the US since they make up more than that half of the workforce. We might not dominate the labor sector, but who cares? It’s called incentive, and there isn’t a big one. We do, however, dominate the teaching field, and people often… Read more »
Amber Yeah my post was sort of facetious. I’m saying why not, why not make women wear the shoe that the women’s movement wants men to wear? Lets do it back – women are worthless, useless, animals, lets have talk shows where men laugh about the torture and mutilation of women like womens talk shows do … because women are responsible for everything that’s bad. Lets start advocating for legal discrimination against women and publishing lies about how they are mainly responsible for abuse. Perhaps if we do back what the women’s movement are doing to us, they will stop… Read more »
Not sure if that was sarcasm or bitter anger, but doing any of those things would probably make things worse.
Good for you, and I agree that gender roles are changing, but there still is an unfair expectation on men to be the primary earner, just as there’s an unfair expectation on women to be Betty Crocker. Female privilege still exists for alot of people, and unlike male privilege it isn’t being challenged.
How can you say women are blind to it and then reference a woman who wrote an article about how grateful she is for it? Women are aware of it.
However it tends to be recognised for individual men and not for men as a whole. Kind of the opposite way as how “rape culture” makes out men as a whole are responsible for rape not individual people.
John S. makes a point. Men could work a lot less, and have less of an impact on the environment, if they didn’t need to pay for the support of women and children. Now, if women work in order to support themselves and some children, we have the same amount of impact on the environment, the same need for resources….
Ref last graf. “we believe”. I believe we’ve been fooled.
Well Done OP. Your piece reminds me of an exchange on the Bill Maher show Politically Incorrect some time ago when ultra feminist Michael Moore proclaimed that men were the cause of all the worlds problems, he listed examples of war, poverty etc but he was really taken to task when he mentioned the environment and included overfishing. Several people told him rightfully so that while fishermen are most men, women of course eat and consume at least half the fish and if you include things like cosmetics made from whale products they consume over half. I found it rather… Read more »
Similar to Ernie Pyle’s reporting during WWII, the novel From Here to Eternity, by James Jones, also paints a truly loving, admiring portrait of the military’s “grunts,” working-class enlisted men and their camaraderie with each other.