Clearly, our society is currently obsessed with modern men and manliness, why?
By now, most of you have read or heard about The New York Times “Room for Debate” opinion page section that debated this question: Are Modern Men Manly Enough? The synopsis for their debate reads: “Are men spending too much time at the spa and the gym in lieu of grittier, manlier pursuits? And if so, is this making them less masculine?”
Writer Natasha Scripture weighs in with her piece: “Where are the Meat and Potato Men?” and Joel Stein has his say in his article, “Rediscover the Don Draper Within”. Natasha says she hasn’t met a manly man in some time, while Joel feels most modern men couldn’t fix a kitchen sink. There are six other writers who opine on the subject of 21st century manliness; in my opinion, author Shawn Taylor won the debate. Brilliant piece, Shawn!
To The New York Times writers and any other person who thinks modern men are not manly, I offer you this distinguished group of bona fide manly men: Aron Ralston, Pat Tillman (and every other man who has served – or is currently serving – in the United States Armed Forces), Man vs. Wild’s Bear Grylls, The cast of Deadliest Catch, the cast of Ice Road Truckers, every healthcare worker affiliated with Doctors Without Boarders, etc.
I could continue giving more examples of men who work in the trades or agriculture, but I’d also like to pay tribute to every chivalrous man who lives his life with integrity and humility. These men can be found everywhere – all over the world. They could be engineers, hairstylists, chefs, school teachers, musicians, nurses, etc. I don’t believe an occupation or a geographic location makes a man manly. Manliness does not have to connote power, strength, boldness, courage, fierceness or ruggedness. Every man is his own man and possesses his own brand of masculinity. I believe manliness comes from a man’s grace and his character; it’s in his soul.
Yes, there has been a superfluous amount of attention placed on 21st century men being “metrosexual” and overly feminized. And yes, companies in the fashion and beauty industries are marketing products for men – so what! I love seeing my husband look dapper and coiffed, the same way he enjoys seeing me styled with purpose. Being “mansome” does not make a man less of a man. All men take pleasure in being groomed and pampered – within their comfort zone.
We can thank the industrial revolution and advances in science and technology for soothing our primitive pursuits. Joel Stein, here’s a question for you: why would a man hunt for meat when he can go to the grocery store and buy a nice Delmonico steak? Furthermore, when was the last time you’ve been hunting? To be fair, Joel, I doubt you’d leave your journalism career to pursue cattle ranching. And here’s a fact for you, Natasha Scripture: men cry; yes, they actually shed tears. Deal with it, Natasha. It’s a beautiful thing.
Are modern men manly enough? I think that’s a ridiculous question. Interestingly enough, The New York Times would never debate this question on their opinion page: Are modern women womanly enough? Wow, can you imagine that! Feminists would crash The New York Times website. I hate to iron and I don’t know how to sew or bake apple pies. Does that make me less womanly? I don’t think so. Moreover, I know plenty of men who enjoy ironing and cooking. Does that make them less manly? Absolutely not!
Clearly, our society is currently obsessed with modern men and manliness, why? What do you think accounts for this scrutiny? Why is the evolution of a man’s gender identity being placed under a microscope?
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About Nicole Johnson
Good stuff. Looking forward to the poll results Nicole.
Poll Option #5: Because men like to feel like men.
Sounds basic but it’s basically the reason.
Also, I think you missed the point, Nicole. Yes, there are still loads of manly men out there, but as a cohort, particularly in the Western world, we as men have lost a hell of a lot of our manly ways, particularly our skills. It’s true that most men now have no idea how to fix a kitchen sink or do an oil change on their car. Hell, I’d bet there are now blokes out there who don’t know how to change a tyre, even. I think this absolutely sucks for my generation of men. I want to reclaim all these skills so I can pass them on to my kids when I have them. I’d rather go out and learn a trade, learn how to fight, and hunt, and fix things – useful, practical, manly stuff, than just nine-to-five in a cubicle farm and redefine that as manly just because it makes me feel good. No way. I want to have some real skills and knowledge to pass on to my kids.
@Jock
I totally agree with your Poll Option #5, in fact, I was just writing about it (hopefully it’ll be on here soon). All me want to feel like men. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. But what does that look like.
The problem that I had with the Don Draper peice in the NYT article, and with the reclaimation of outdated concepts of masculinity (we need to hunt, fix cars, etc.) is that men don’t HAVE to be those things anymore. And while it’s totally fine to personally identify with a more traditional archetype of masculinity, it’s no man’s business to push that on all other men. I’m sitting in a 9-to-5 cubicle right now…it blows, but that’s just the life of young Americans today. It doesn’t shape my masculinity, nor does my lack of wanting to hunt or fix things.
If men want to teach their kids survival traits–hunting, fighting, fixing–that’s fine, there’s use in that. But don’t specifically teach these things only to boys under the conviction that this is what MAKES men. And people need to lay off the guys in cubicles, we could be developing the next product that will launch America out of this economic hell. Modern men are nuanced, they adapt to what it takes to be successful. Unfortunately, that’s not always hunting and gathering.
The issue isn’t that manly men don’t exist, it is simply that people do not know them when they see them.
Believe it or not, many manly men, are also fairly intelligent. Which runs right in the face of the classical manly man. Which is typically seen as a physically strong but ultimately simple minded.
So while a manly man who can replace a sink, and replace the oil in their or your car, and even build you a website. They aren’t spending a lot of time bodybuilding. They also gather in groups and hang out in places that are, *gasp*, not bars.
I know, because I am a part of such a group, they are often referred to as “makers” and their hang outs are makerspaces or hackerspaces
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace
So because they aren’t strapping young lads, or hanging out in bars, people assume they do not exist. So the whole thing is just observational bias. Seen through the filter of a j-crew catalog.
Hackerspaces also appear to be broadly communalist – which goes against the individualism we expect of men – and not necessarily dedicated to traditionally masculine endeavors. In such a space you might be doing creative or craft work when you “should” be doing trade work or jobs that pay off near term.
We don’t pay much attention to craft over trade, partly because drawing a line between them is not a very American thing to do (compared to, say, the British). But there is a manly gloss and approach to artisanal skills that mixes traditional and not so traditional masculinity in interesting ways. There’s also a lingering male bias in certain crafts, especially those that make things for men to use.
@ Jock – Nicole didn’t miss the point. You missed her point.
If NYT ran a story about why modern women are not womanly enough, there would be riots in the streets
Exactly. As usual it’s a simple matter of reversing the genders and you can easily imagine the reaction! Projection is the fundamental nature of this behaviour. What I mean is that men can never be considered “manly” enough. It’s like a carrot dangling in front of our noses, we keep striving to meet an impossible standard and the goal posts keep being shifted back. Whether men actually are “manly” enough in reality has nothing to do with it whatsoever.
It’s just so patently obvious that endlessly complaining that men don’t live up to an ideal maintains the pressure to keep striving harder and harder to live up to it, like a hampster in a perpetual wheel of insecurity. Will we ever be considered adequate as we are? I doubt it, society has always benefitted from this mind game.
I think that poll is a bit leading. Not that those aren’t possible answers, but they’re quite restrictive.
Personally I suspect that while the ground for women’s lib was prepared by the first wave feminists, no similar movement has prepared men (or the women in their lives) to for the shifting of gender roles and to interpret new opportunities as empowerment. Men are still addicted to masculinity because the benefits have never really been questioned in the same way that femininity has.
Why this is the case is anyone’s guess, but I think the archetype of the strong/silent white knight has alot to do with it.
I vote “Our society is uncomfortable with the evolution of men’s gender identity in the 21st century.”
I don’t think we’ve reached a place where everyone can love embrace all types of masculinities. We need to stop these “Men HAVE to evolve past these traditional identities” and “Men HAVE to return to these traditional identities” retorts. The fact of the matter is that culture, one’s childhood, and so many other variables contribute to one’s masculine identity. So men are going to be different, but they’re still men. That’s it. Nothing more to say.
Most guys, if you tally up their useful skills (which can include some cubicle-farmy stuff) are manlier than you’d think. I’ll use myself as a convenient example:
Can do minor stuff on car – do a jump, diagnose and replace a bad battery, lights, etc as well as keep a bike running
Can follow a diagram and solder up a piece of equipment as well as act as family sysadmin
Can grow a good amount of food in my backyard, identify the wild birds in my neighborhood, and identify a good many constellations, prominent stars, and planets
Can deal with all routine housekeeping chores, painting, and minor electric/plumbing
Can drive a big truck, climb on big ladders, and deal with complicated equipment for my job
Can play three musical instruments
Know how to shave and clear out those nose hairs
Can earn a living any number of ways
Have a nice inside offensive game with good rebounding skills
Have been making the same woman deliriously happy for over twenty years
Have been a dad to two outstanding boys
Some of that is my inclinations and some of it is our times, but it ain’t bad. We don’t always know the full story on that guy who built log cabins and stormed Nazi pillboxes in his spare time. Maybe he was into bonsai or playing the viola – that stuff can be manly too.
Men aren’t tabulae rasae. They’re more linear and aggressive than women, by and large. Overmuch metrosexuality might be a problem. Maybe not, though. Some of the biggest fops in the Rennaissance were deadly with the rapier, after all. I see two dangers, however. Reaction formation men who are hysterically macho. (See Wilhelm Reich for why this is a reaction to powerlessness under capitalism.) Or passive-aggressive men who are overtly “feminist,” but use this position to push both men and women around through guilt.
“Are modern men manly enough?”
My karate sensei spends a lot of time at the gym but he can also fix a sink, a boat, and do construction work around the house…To me, he seems like the uber-macho male model…and yet, he also enjoyed that whole “Mad Men” work scenario of vodka and water lunches with clients and bragging about the next big account until it all crashed down a year ago….To him, I think it is important not just to be swimming with the rest of the crowd but to be way ahead of it in the lead which led him to do something really risky…Now he is slogging away at his job trying to keep up with impossible sales goals while anticipating first time fatherhood and his own health worries….Meanwhile, he watches his friends hanging out at their nice beach homes and enjoying their seemingly cushier lives, while he contemplates whether or not to sell his boat just to balance his household budget….There is so much pressure to succeed and to attain those bragging rights, and yet, the reality is just having enough to pay off your bills is pressure enough….We don’t talk about it but I can feel his fear of failure is overwhelming him right now….
What accounts for this scrutiny? Most people love boxes. It gives them a sense of control, of safety, of security. To divide , to separate. How can we work through it? Transcend it. If more people were willing and did the “work” (self-reflection, self-growth, questioning their beliefs, their conditioning , their memory) labels would not be “needed.” No labels, no limitations. If people realized how they “saw” themselves (working to make the unconscious, conscious) and understood how that shapes how they see the world, maybe things would change.
Manliness does not have to connote power, strength, boldness, courage, fierceness or ruggedness
It doesn’t have to be all of that but it should be most of it. The sissification of dudes nowadays is amazing. What kind of person ( not just man) should be powerless, weak and cowardly. Articles like this make tender guys feel manly which is horrible. Shame them into going for what they actually want; to be strong powerful and courageous ( I can’t picture a single human being that doen’t want these traits). If they fall short pat them on the back for trying and tell them go at it again but don’t rationalize this softness.
Well said, I really agree. We should be striving for these positive qualities that we used to strive for and keep trying to get them, not accepting mediocrity or worse and patting ourselves on the back for it. In our culture now, it’s not good enough for women to accept mediocrity and they are encouraged to strive for power and strength and boldness; men, meanwhile, are told to shy away from these things. Rubbish. We should all be trying to achieve these great things. Manliness should indeed be most of those qualities and men should do their best to achieve them.
Just took a gander through Shawn Taylor’s piece. Cringe worthy. If you think his was the best response… HO BOY! Then I know serious discussions of masculinity simply cannot be had in mainstream culture. Yet.
I agree that being there as a father is probably pretty dang important. That said…. Shawn’s an idiot. Not every man who has sex is automatically consenting to fatherhood. Sorry Shawn, but that’s why we have birth control. Unless you’d like to extend the same effing courtesy and tell women that every time THEY have sex, they’re obligated to motherhood? Oh, but that’d open up all kinds of icky problems, like anti-abortion, anti-birth control, and anti-choice.
No doubt, one day I want to be a father and a damned good one at that. Certainly if I got a woman pregnant, even/especially when it was unintended, I’d feel serious responsibility for the situation and act accordingly. BUT, I am NOT obligated to be a parent. No one should ever be forced to be a parent because of some nostalgic “code” based upon one individual’s personal needs and some vague whining for bygone halcyon days. This isn’t the 1950′s.
Men have a difficult enough time asserting their rights to be or not to be (and ain’t that the question) a father. Let’s not make it worse for men who don’t want to be parents by shaming them for making that completely personal choice. Unless, of course, Shawn Taylor thinks shaming men into being fathers when they don’t want to be/aren’t ready to be/can’t actually be a father is somehow beneficial to ANYONE, especially the child.
But I digress, just because the New York Times has an op-ed piece with random talking-heads chiming in, does not prove that society is “obsessed with modern men and manliness.” There is far more to culture than the NYT, especially when it comes to Middle America. Indeed, quite the argument exists for the opposite; society frequently DOESN’T care about modern men or manliness other than to mock it, demonize it, or try to bottle and sell a horrible stereotype of it.
Anyhoo, those are my two cents. Spend ‘em how you will.
Zek, you are awesome. Bingo!
@zek. An idiot? Really? A personal attack? Wouldn’t expect any less. Sorry, but if you cannot handle the responsibility of parenting, don’t have sex without a condom. Unless biology has changed when I was not looking, you have sex, there is a possibility of having a child. Your contraception is your responsibility. There was no mention of the halcyon 50′s, and you should probably try and lend your awareness to things other than your Western interpretations. Men have zero difficulties asserting their rights, and as a person who looks quite white, I’m sure that you never personally have had this problem. What is happening now is a balancing out of so many years of patriarchal privilege, that it may seem as if there is an all out attack on men. I work with men, young fathers, most days of the week. I am trying to get them to understand: you may not (or should not) be in the child’s life, but you are a conduit for that child to access that other half of their ancestral narrative. And there is nothing nostalgic about living with integrity. We’ve moved away from that and many of us have the social-sexual mores of a horde of marauding vikings. There are many current (Non-Western) cultures that live by sets of rules, codes, what have you, and their children (and others in their lives) are better off for it.
Shawn,
When someone engages in meanness, ignorance, and/or cruelty, I call it out. If I see someone promulgating idiocy, I will name it.
But feel free to dismiss the substantive portions of my comment as a personal attack. If that makes you feel better.
Meanwhile, I think it is irresponsible to impose your individual values upon another person and shame them for it because they don’t share your privilege or your opinions. Telling an impoverished 16 year old who hasn’t even known his own father or had a adult conversation about contraception that because he had sex is has agreed to be a father.
Let me repeat: consent to sex IS NOT consent to parenthood.
Our society, by and large, believes that women should not be forced to become mothers. Abortion, while controversial by a minority, is generally allowed. Birth control even more so. I make the reasonable assumption that you believe a woman has the right to have an abortion. If you believe that women have the right to choose whether or not they can become mothers, then not extending this same effing courtesy to men is simple hypocrisy. At this point, you have no moral leg to stand on.
But instead of talking about the difficulties in men obtaining good contraception, in knowing how to use it, in understanding the consequences of sex, what parenthood entails, and how these problems disproportionately affect poor men and men of color, you’d rather talk about MY privilege?
Or would you rather use your privilege to shame men, essentially telling them to “man-up”? Because that’s not helpful. In fact, it’s harmful. Shaming people for making the choice whether or not they become a parent is about as harmful as it gets. It is comparable to pro-lifers standing outside an abortion clinic heckling young women who are entering to make one of the most difficult choices they will face in their life. It is disgusting and I will not shirk from calling it such.
Does that offend you? Too bad. But you don’t care, I believe. You made your article an attack and so I don’t believe you really care if anyone’s upset. So don’t pretend to be bothered at my “personal attack” when you really don’t care.
I fact, I daresay you hold rather messed-up views in general. Men are not “marauding vikings” and to play into that demonization is about as internalized misandry as it gets. And I find it laughable that you then end your comment with an Arab slave trader argument. Hint: just because other cultures do X does not make X okay. Moreover, just because X works for one culture doesn’t make X good for everyone else. Plenty of cultures, both Western and non-Western believe that the sexes should be segregated. Is that something you support? Plenty of cultures support female genital mutilation. Is that something you support? Plenty of cultures think technology is evil and that pictures steal your soul. Do you want to dismantle the internet and ban photography? Reducto ad absurdum. Your argument is horribly wrong by reason of absurdity.
But honestly, I could go on. The problem with your article (and your comment) is not the logic, which anyone can see is flawed. The problem is the attitude, the belief that masculinity is something which one person can define and that telling someone to man-up, essentially emasculating them through shame, is completely okay. The problem is this attitude that if men don’t make the choices YOU think are right, then they’re all wrong and need to be talked to harshly. I’m glad you do work among young fathers to try to help them, but I can’t help wondering how they’d feel knowing that you’d impose your personal judgments onto the unique circumstances of their lives. I wonder if they’d be happy to know you advocated that if they decide they’re not ready to be fathers then they deserve to be castigated by you.
And this isn’t unique to just you Shawn. It’s a problem so many men fall into. It’s a problem that so many men think is okay, as if internalized misandry is somehow not harmful to yourself or others. But let’s be real: it isn’t good for the mother, for the father, or for the child, to force anyone to do anything. People should not be made to be parents if they’re not ready to or they don’t want to. Until you can understand that, you’ll always be writing angry articles Shawn.
Note, should read as:
” Telling an impoverished 16 year old who hasn’t even known his own father or had a adult conversation about contraception that because he had sex he has agreed to be a father and must be a father is wrong.”
As usuals you retreat into the cool distance of “but feel free to dismiss the substantive portions of my comment as a personal attack. If that makes you feel better.” You are the one who feels as if people who are not agreeing with you are wrong. The article was not angry (nor did I title it), but you seem to be contextually ignorant. It was a question about men, so I put the answer there. Once again, you may not agree, but you have sex you ARE consenting to possibly creating a child, unless you are using contraception. Nothing moral about this. It is a biological fact. You missed the point were I DON’T SAY you have to be an active, present, and involved parent. What I do say is that your are responsible for and to that child. A glaring difference. Whether it is through child support, or introducing other family members to that child.
“You hold pretty messed up views in general.” That’s that arrogance again. I’ve read much of your other work, you little academic saboteur you, and if anyone crosses Zek’s limited worldview line, they are outcast from the ‘I have three college degrees’ pseudo-intellectual fiefdom of the troubadour, instrumentalist. Your privilege and hypocrisy knows no boundaries. You stated in another post (and I’m paraphrasing) that you wanted a space for men to be able to talk about being good people, but you are the type of personality that impedes these types of spaces from happening in an effective manner. You could have sought me out and asked questions, but instead you had a little tantrum and insulted me. It’s great to see folks take a stand, but you need to be a little more adult in your approach. I’m no longer going to feed your ego and go back and forth, but if you want to have a real conversation about this, you can come to one of our weekly meetings (five years strong). We are a group of men who are supporting each other and doing real and tangible things in the world, and not just creating jolly web-based pirate identities and carrying false flags of indignation.
“Clearly, our society is currently obsessed with modern men and manliness, why?” IMO, clearly society isn’t obsessed with modern men and manliness. For one thing, most men that you pass on the street are not obsessed with society’s view of “manliness.” Perhaps because TGMP focusses on men, it appears that society is interested but in the big picture it’s not.
If “society” was obsessed about modern men and manliness, men wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in. Society has been obsessed with women for the past 30 years and that obsession has brought women to where they are today. Society continues to be obsessed with women and continue to expand and identify their roles in society so as to enhance, enrich and nurture their lives.
Is society obsessed with modern men and manliness or are they obsessed with talking about it when particular issues arise? As I’m typing this, I’m listening to the news on the Aurora massacre. Society will be obsessed with talking about this “guy” … who he is, why he did what he did. Just as society became “obsessed” with the Columbine shootings. But as a whole, not obsessed with men and manliness.
Then again there are areas of society that may be obsessed with men and manliness. Some of these areas include the degradation of men, minimization of men or simply wanting to define men as “they” want to define them. And I should add the redefinition of men in this context is not for the benefit or positive progress of men.
“Because men like to feel like men.”
Bingo. And a lot of women like for the to be the MAN.
There has probably always been a fascination with machismo/manliness. The Soviet Union couldn’t get rid of it even with their social programs.
Maybe off topic, but the pic made me think of this. I read somewhere that in the olden days killing a man was the easiest way for a man to gain cred with women…i guess things like mma are the kinder gentler version of this.
The fact that it’s novel enough to be in an article pretty much belies that it’ no longer the standard. It’s become a gimmick. A few episodes of “The Deadliest Catch” and an ironic handlebar mustache do not a movement make.
Obsession with Don Draper? Ask the squeeing fan girls over at Jezebel and Bitch magazine, they’re the ones with the weekly recaps.
“Every man is his own man and possesses his own brand of masculinity.” Bingo!
What short memories a society has.
What is the evidence that our society today really IS *especially* obsessed with masculinity? I’d like to see a persuasive argument that this is, in fact, a recent development. I’m not so sure that the early twenty-first century is particularly anxious about what masculinity means. The 1920′s and 30′s and 40′s and 50′s and…. were pretty obsessed with it, too.
I’d also need to see a definition of obsession that I can use to test today’s media coverage. An few articles across the web and across some big-name magazines does not make an obsession.
P.S. Let’s say for the sake of argument that we men today are NOT “manly enough.” Tough sh*t. I’d be happy to pay a woman to re-shingle my house. I got better things to do with my time.
The 1930s, because of the Great Depression, was actually somewhat subversive in its view of masculinity. With a lot of men’s worth and power taken from them, we began to nurture subversive role models – elegant men-of-the-world like Cary Grant and Fred Astaire, decent small town types like Jimmy Stewart, tough guys who were little like Bogart and Cagney. All stood for some manly qualities we would recognize today – and all had things about them we no longer accept as manly. And of course the man-machine got reset to Traditional after, and becaue of, WW2.
“Are modern men manly enough? I think that’s a ridiculous question. Interestingly enough, The New York Times would never debate this question on their opinion page: Are modern women womanly enough?”
Well…let’s say that someone like TIME magazine ran a feature story asking if the new CEO of Yahoo was “good for working moms” for taking the job when she was six months pregnant…yeah, that happened just last week and from what I can tell, the public outcry was more against her actually working and being pregnant than it was for her.
http://healthland.time.com/2012/07/17/marissa-mayer-is-the-yahoo-ceos-pregnancy-good-for-working-moms/
I don’t think anyone should start talking about “manliness” or “masculinity” unless and until they can give a good working definition of those terms. Generally speaking, I think it would be something like “the perceived degree to which a male lives up to the stereotypical gender expectations of his culture.” Since I generally think American culture is pretty shitty, then I think the guy who measures up as “manly” or “masculine” in our culture is probably pretty shitty, too. The existence of this website tells me I’m not alone in thinking that. I further think that anyone aspiring to be a “manly man” or “masculine” in this culture probably isn’t worthy of judging me at all.
I think a big part of the problem is that after the women’s movement that changed so much of what women were able, or expected to do, there was not a corresponding “Men’s Movement”. The one attempt at a movement changing how men were defined in society, coming out of Robert Bly’s “Iron John” ended up being a laughable mix of Joseph Campbell, L. Ron Hubbard and Leo Buscaglia. The women’s movement was concrete, with real goals, and real grievances. Yes there was some spiritual exploration, and some mumbo jumbo, but the base was grounded in real life. The short fad of men hugging each other naked and covered in mud in the woods, had no practical end. Men never learned to adjust to the way women have changed. We’re trying to define masculinity based on an action movie template, which is cartoonish at best, and homicidaly insane at worst.
I just want to point out that whatever else a “real man” may or may not do, he definitely does not apologize for being himself or worry about adhering to others’ standards.