The founders of these huge companies each had an aggressive moral compass, in the sense that they saw the world needed their idea, and they were willing to risk everything to see that idea to fruition. They walk on the moon, even though it looks pretty damned impossible to everyone but them at the outset. They are “macho” in the sense I am talking about, for sure. But what if we broaden that out to men outside the rarified air of the ass-kickers of the technology revolution?
I have always loved Stephen King, not so much for his writing—like the rest of the world—but for his backstory. He grew up in rural Maine with his mom, who made a living cleaning a home for the mentally ill. He graduated from the University of Maine at Orono and married his classmate Tabitha Spruce. They lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, with her student loan and savings and his occasional short story providing some extra cash. But they literally lived in a trailer and didn’t have the money for the “pink medicine” when their kids got sick. King ultimately sold Carrie, his first novel, for hardcover publication for $2,500. Then on Mother’s Day, he learned that the paperback rights to the book had been sold and his portion would be $200,000. King went to the local drug store and bought his wife Tabitha a hair dryer. That is macho.
Father John Unni is the Pastor of St. Cecelia’s Catholic in Boston. He’s highly aware of both the church’s potential to heal and the recent history of suffering as a result of the pedophilia scandal. His parish has grown and thrives, including many from the gay and lesbian community. As a result, he scheduled a special mass during gay pride month. He received death threats. The Archdiocese cancelled that mass and gave him an explanation to read to his congregation. With the bishop sitting on the altar, Father John held the prepared text but refused to read it. Instead, he showed an aggressive moral compass, risking his job and his entire career as a priest. “My only agenda is Christ’s agenda,” he said. “And Christ loves us just the way we are—black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight.” He received a 10-minute standing ovation that included the most conservative, old-school Irish Catholic parishioners.
Julio Medina was the leader of the biggest drug gang in the South Bronx. He was sentenced to life in prison. After five years in Sing Sing, Julio decided to try to walk on his own moon, no matter how long the odds. There were frequent stabbings inside. As an inmate, you never want to get blood on your uniform because you will either refuse to talk and get sent to solitary, or talk and get stabbed yourself. So a man falls and inmates scatter. Finally, a friend was stabbed in front of Julio. Men jumped over him and ran. Something clicked. Julio bent down and picked up his friend, getting blood splattered all over his uniform. In that one act, he changed his life. He worked to calm violence inside, eventually received parole, and established an organization, Exodus, which has helped over 10,000 newly-released, high-security prisoners beat the odds and stay out for good.
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Joao Silva by Michael Kamber
“Sometimes we fail our own moral compass, our own emotional compass,” says Greg Marinovich, a former combat photo-journalist, talking about his colleague Kevin Carter who won the Pulitzer Prize for a picture of an emaciated Sudanese toddler, doubled over, as a vulture lurked behind her. But Carter was never able to recall what happened to the child and within three months had committed suicide. That quote comes from a discussion at the Walter Reed bedside of Joao Silva, another photojournalist who had both legs blown off by a land mine in Afghanistan. Later, Joao is testing out his new robotic legs, hoping to go back to shooting the truth of combat, when fellow photojournalist Michael Kamber visits. Kamber gets the call, at Joao’s bedside, that their peer, Tim Hetherington, has perished in Libya. Joao, with no legs but a big heart, holds the weeping Kamber (See Kamber’s tribute to Hetherington here). Which of these guys is most macho and for what? It’s hard to know where to start and finish that discussion, other than to say they all are willing to take enormous risks because they simply think it’s the right thing to do.
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It’s not that women can’t do any of these things—but for right now, they don’t tend to do them in the way men do.
The aggressive moral compass of guy land cuts both ways. Collectively, we are much more willing to ascribe evil intent to men who behave badly. When a woman kills her child, we all get upset, but we don’t say she’s bad or evil. We look for reasons she might have gone off the deep end. When a guy cheats on his wife, we say he deserved a golf club to the head and find discussion of his mental illness as a weak excuse.
Perhaps, the context of man-hating is what drives men to the extreme risk-taking and a worldview built around having something to prove. The new macho is a vanguard of men who don’t accept the Charlie Sheen characterization of all mankind. They prove that we can be manly men and be good, all the way to the core.
So if Webster’s definition of macho is an “assertively, self-consciously male,” I would translate that in today’s world to mean a man who is willing to figure out what is good—and then go off and do the impossible. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Like Steve Jobs, or Julio Medina, or Father John. That’s the new macho.
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So if Webster’s definition of macho is an “assertively, self-consciously male,” I would translate that in today’s world to mean a man who is willing to figure out what is good—and then go off and do the impossible. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Like Steve Jobs, or Julio Medina, or Father John. That’s the new macho.
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If women want to be macho too, I have no problem with that. The new macho is a big tent with plenty of room for those with an aggressive moral compass, ready and willing to take a stand.
But, how about a break from all this talk about the lack of good men? There are macho men everywhere. We just seem incapable of seeing them. Or we just have, until now, forgotten to look.
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Also: “Macho Women” by Tom Matlack
—Photo Bruce Berrien/Flickr
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About Tom Matlack
Vocalyze
The “Girl Power!” movements that began in the 90′s morphed from empowering young girls into BASHING all things male. The endless girl-power/girls rule/men suck narrative has convinced us that, yeah, everything we do does suck. In any TV commercial wherein a couple tries to figure something out, its the man that must always be portrayed as clueless and the women must always be the one who figures it out. To reverse the roles would be sexist and demeaning to women, but to always portray the man as a fumbling incompetent idiot is right and proper in Girl Power! America 2011. With male role models like that (as opposed to Steve McQueen) is it any wonder masculinity is dead? In an effort to “correct” the precieved sexism in media we saw in the 1970′s we have gone too far in portraying all women as flawless superheros and all men as fat, impotent befuddled losers who need a woman’s help just to survive the day!
Please don’t equate the “girl power” movement with feminism. Any remotely informed feminist scoffs at at it. “Girl power” is about people (often men) making money off of them by dressing them up in scantily clad outfits (while having them claim to be ‘pure’!) and having them sing crappy songs, which usually end up being about boys boys boys anyways.
As for the commercial thing, it is pretty annoying, but I’m happy that I’m starting to see more commercials with kids products focus on dads instead of just moms (I just saw a Gogurt commercial do it). I actually used to get really pissed off that all of the commercials with two siblings always represented the younger sibling as the smart one who solves the problems or has a better idea than the bumbling older sibling.
“we have gone too far in portraying all women as flawless superheros and all men as fat, impotent befuddled losers who need a woman’s help just to survive the day!”
Agreed.
Tom, what you describe as “The New Macho” is not the new macho. It’s what macho has always been and always will be: A person willing to stand up for what they believe in, no matter what the consequences. My hero growing up was Pablo Picasso—a man who once (according to legend) had to burn nearly 2 years worth of his artwork in a fireplace in order to stay warm enough to stay alive. Now that is macho.
I want to raise one objection here regarding Steve Jobs. Anyone who attempts to deny paternity by claiming to be infertile, and compounds it by perjuring himself, is not a man. That behavior is evident of a failed human being. Then again, history is rife with utter douchebags accomplishing great things, so I don’t think that this means we can just disregard his sizable achievements. I just would like to put forth the notion that if we’re going to offer him up as a masculine construct, we need to be more careful.
Tom Matlack, sometimes I think you must be bi-polar or something. I no sooner finish reading your piece (junks Hot-I.D.) . And here I am thinking to myself “another ‘recovering person’ doing his ‘penance’ by becoming a ‘Mangina’ worshiping at the alter of ‘Femdom’ (like your fellow recovering blogger, Dan Griffen). Then I read this article and couldn’t agree more with you. You hit it dead center on the head. Although Jon Pietz does have a point. Most of this has alway been “macho”. What has changed is that it’s no longer considered “unmacho” to be hands on as a father (even changing dirty diapers). Just do what you know in your heart to be the right thing and you’ll usually be right.
Please don’t call any male a “Mangina”. Why do we have to ascribe weakness to a female organ that gives life to both courageous men and women?
Ditto on the “mangina” comment. I saw my wife push and struggle and agonize for hours (even with drugs) to pump out our two babies. She cried, she groaned, she shit herself. Then she fainted when it was all through. It was the toughest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do–ever–and I was in fucking awe of her.
I think the term New Macho has been around for a little while:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/09/20/why-we-need-to-reimagine-masculinity.html
Great article!
To be brief, was abused a child, and had no role model. I found that following my own moral compass, and damn the consequences, gave me my macho, my own strength.
Thanks!
Fantastically well said, makes one feel damned proud to be a man.
But there is something a little troubling about it, it bothers me that women and men are still brought up to play these roles differently. It tramples on the ideal of individual choice and determination a little. I’d feel more comfortable if these values were as impressed on young women as they are on young men.
The misogyny in this essay is frightening. To say that women have built their empires — Oprah, Huffington Post, Mrs. Fields — “around a personality, even named after the founder” only serves in this context to bash the women (and too few of them) who have become wildly successful. Was Steve Jobs not building Apple off of his “assoholic” personality? Wasn’t Mark Zuckerburg just trying to score some nookie when he started Facebook in his Harvard dorm?
That bothered me, too. Tom dismisses women-formed companies with one fell swoop. It sort of put me off the rest of the piece which had some very good points. I think we need to be careful….. And Zuckerberg and Jobs were both geniuses but they were rather awful to the women, at least some of the women in their lives. Although it seems both of them cleaned up their acts eventually.
The problem with male machismo is that it, unfortunately, assumes that HIS story is in fact history. To suggest that women are not as creative, entrepreneurial or inventive as men simply due to a lack of strong moral compass or a refusal to take risks is to discount (yet again) the many contributions that women have and continue to make in the marketplace. I have included a short list of female inventors below, many of whose research and inventions made possible the achievements and innovations, and in fact may have saved the lives, of the men mentioned in the article.
Furthermore, I would suggest that if the success of some women today, as mentioned in the article, is due to “force of personality,” then perhaps it is because they are the ones who reach “top of mind” greatness because they have entered fields that traditionally have lower barries to success for women and have also refused to allow their creative talents and ingenuity to be overlooked.
Could it be possible that men have historically achieved greater successes as inventors in the marketplace because they have traditionally been provided access and opportunity not typically available to women? Or that they have not been subject to the “good girls don’t make waves; good girls are polite and smile,” form of socialization? Or that men have historically been encouraged to pursue academic coursework in the STEM (science, technology, education, math) disciplines, while women were often expected (and directed by traditional fathers paying for their educations) to pursue “soft skills” degrees in teaching, nursing, marketing, communications, home economics, and so on.
The accumulation of soft skills allows women to engage in entrepreneurial pursuits in traditionally female oriented fields (i.e. Oprah: Communications & Marketing; Mrs. Fields: Home Economics), but is unlikely to be enough to lead to actual innovation in the form of new product creation, much of which has historically occurred in male dominated arenas such as manufacturing and IT. Successful people have a tendency to “grow where they are planted.” How many women or African Americans, do you think, would have been welcome to attend the Homebrew Computer Club in 1974? Or would have had enough familiarity with the business operations of a company such as IBM in 1976, the year that Steve Jobs introduced the Apple computer, so that they could even begin to understand how to challenge such a dominant industry force?
As one’s education is primarlly intended to prepare one for a vocation, the natural extension of these early academic choices is that men historically have been more likely to pursue jobs in manufacturing and technology-driven industries. As a result, they accumulate skill sets, academic knowledge and personal networks that support entrepreneurial AND innovative ventures, as well as are provided particular insight or “opportunity recognition” skills that allow them to identify weaknesses within their industries that are ripe for disruptive innovation.
I would suggest that as more women accumulate a broader set of STEM-based academic and vocational experiences and a broader network of resources, we will in fact begin to see more female entrepreneurs developing innovative products and technologies, and they will get credit for doing so. As young women are provided opportunities to join the ranks of male entrepreneurs through publicly offered events such as http://startupweekend.org/, they too will begin to shine in the world of true innovation.
In the meantime, however, please do not continue to disregard those women whose achievements enabled the greats such as Steve Jobs and Mark Z. to become the successful men they are (and were).
For starters…
1843 Ada Augusta Lovelace laid some of the early conceptual and technical groundwork for high technology by helping develop an early computer. Ada Lovelace is best known as the first computer programmer. She wrote about Charles Babbage’s “Analytical Engine” with such clarity and insight that her work became the premier text explaining the process now known as computer programming. Her work produced what she called “the plan”. In hindsight what Ada had proposed was a program stored on punch cards for use on an early computer.
1952 Grace Hopper was credited with devising the first compiler, a program that translates instructions for a computer from English to machine language.
1965 Stephanie Kwolek invented one of the modern world’s most readily recognized and widely used materials: Kevlar. Her name appears on 16 patents; she is sole patent holder on seven.
And other women inventors of note: http://www.ideafinder.com/features/classact/women.htm
Thanks for this article. I’m a woman and I adore men. I’ve never believed in bashing men, I love them! I do wonder, though, why it’s necessary to compare men to women in the way you’ve done in this article. I love what you say about men, but then why do you have to subtly denigrate women to make your point? If the point of your article is that the modern man is changing the world through risk-taking, developing a strong moral compass, facing difficult situations with bravery (including emotional ones) and innovation (as opposed to brute strength and stoicism, the male myth), why not just say that? Is it really necessary to say that women aren’t doing these things in the same way? no kidding. Men and women are different. Both wonderful and valuable in their own right. The article would have been much stronger if you hadn’t felt the need to undermine women’s contributions in order to celebrate men’s.
I agree with this comment entirely. I heartily applaud bringing to the fore the wonderful achievements and attributes of the manly man. My son has a very ‘traditional’ marriage which is not one in which I would be fulfilled, but I am so proud the way he takes care of his wife and serves his country. I always knew he would be a manly man type and never desired to take this away. I did, however, encourage him to build up others rather than tear them down to make himself feel big and powerful. And the amount of negative comparisons to women is disheartening. Rather than being able to stand back and feel ‘Wow, men are great! I want to go home and tell my man just how great he really is!’, instead I have a feeling of ‘hey, wait a minute, just because women weren’t historically able to get credit for much of their work doesn’t mean they didn’t do tremendous acts based on risk, too.’
women have taking more risks then men but are under credited. you look at these succseful men i bet the had a strong women helping them when the would get discouraged.
I think that we have to look at the strengths of each sex independently of the other. The sexes cannot be compared because the sexes are created different but equal. To compare men to women in areas such as parenting, work, sex and relationships is comparing apples to oranges.
The weaknesses of each sex in each of these areas will be counterbalanced by the opposite sexes strength,
Let us stop comparing and be great in our own light.
I really like the direction the Onion News Network is taking, keep up the awesome work guys!
Thank God we live in a country with so many different lifestyles, because I haven’t been living in the same society as you portray it in this article and comments.
Tom, thank you for creating a new definition for macho. I believe all men want to fulfill your ideal. We lack the role models and the tools. Your post lays the ground work.
I watch your Sing Sing video – you had me in tears. Not from pity, but from feeling your and the men you visited greatness. It’s sad as men we have to experience extreme events to touch launch greatness.
I’ve come to feel that as men we are meant to struggle and over come. Steve Jobs did and so did Julio Medina. Let’s create a world where more men get to be Steve Jobs.
I think Macho is a person who realizes that their own journey to manhood is not complete without mentoring and guiding the emerging generation. When a person accepts responsibility to help others through the challenges of maturation, they themselves discover true manhood. A macho man is nothing more than a man who recognizes his place in the cycle of life and give selflessly.
this message is old news in a new light. for me it helps bring to light things i once forgot. men are only seen as superior because thats the way the media portrays us. the biological role f a male is to protect his mate also protect his offspring. these men you mentioned where doing just that. successful people are the ones who appear to be extremely unsuccessful but still have the integrity to keep pushing even though they fail on a consistent basis. these men include guys like Goeorge Washington. as a general he lead an army that was out gunned and out maned to free a country for a tyrant. the issue with todays man is they were told they were special and different giving them a sense of entitlement. this entitlement has lead to the down fall of the planet. human nature was never to destroy another human but to help that human survive. this is the mentality of macho men they dont want to harm another person. they want to help that person survive and help that person reach there full potential. this brings them joy in a life full of questioning yourself
The difference between brave and reckless, like the difference between nurturing and coddling, is a great question masculine and feminine men and women have to battle with every day.
Unfortunately the battle between the sexes is still selling well but, more unfortunately, those who have won that battle by not playing it lose sight of the mindset the rest of the world is still stuck in. They get smug, and cynical, and coddling and reckless.
I wanted to like this article, but the author rubbed me the wrong way very soon into it. To say “think about the most well-known companies founded by female entrepreneurs” and that they “aren’t product innovations…as much as women who have successfully marketed an image of themselves” then essentially go on to dismiss their work as less important is unfair. I understand that, to men, the work of the women you’ve mentioned may not have changed the life of the average man, but the average woman would beg to differ. You said: “These companies [Google, Facebook, Apple] were all founded by men who believed in the power of their own ideas to transform the world in ways that no one else really thought possible.” How many people in the 1950s thought a black woman who grew up poor in rural Mississippi could build a multi-media empire and be worth $2.5 billion? Oprah has a big personality but it was her genius that made her a media mogul and not just talk show host-puppet controlled by her advertisers. And it is her genius and innovation that inspires more women to believe in themselves and their own world-changing ideas.
I could give more examples but I won’t. I’d recommend you open your eyes to the different, but equally awesome, ways that women’s genius and innovation manifest. I would then encourage you to get hip to the lesser known women innovators in the sectors in which you’re familiar. They exist but they are HIGHLY underrepresented and under-praised for a myriad of reasons. I would also encourage you to support the programs that are helping to increase the numbers of women in areas that we tend to be underrepresented such as the technology sector you so lovingly talk about. There’s a great group called Black Girls Code that could use donations.