Is there a manly way to approach one’s own mortality? Edgar Wilson offers his th0ughts.
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The traditional masculine conception insists that men play through the pain—even go looking for opportunities to deal with injury through risk-taking sports, hobbies, and other such macho pastimes because “chicks dig scars,” and to avoid risk is to be labeled unmanly.
Selective Service, the government B-plan for military recruitment, is mandatory only for American adult males, even as the many branches of the military (slowly) amend their policies on female, transgendered and gay individuals wishing to serve. The assumption underlying all these new policies seems to be that men can be compelled to join—it would be shameful, unpatriotic, and in all other ways unmanly for a guy not to welcome his conscription—while for all other groups, it is unexpected but officially acceptable that they, too, should join the military. Men belong in harm’s way; everyone else is merely tolerated.
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Men, our culture teaches, can be expected to risk death (and can expect to be celebrated for doing so). Nothing could be more honorable. The idea that they might have other expectations for managing their mortality doesn’t figure into official policy, much less the popular consciousness. Self-sacrifice may be noble, but the forced association between men and mortality takes it much further than that.
And that gives us perhaps the most grotesque misappropriation of masculinity: dying like a man.
How can any society tolerate the idea of gendered death? How can it become a trope, such a common expression, to suggest that a violent death represents the ultimate realization of manhood, or that electing to die violently (the real meaning of “blaze of glory” being a spectacular, grizzly termination) is the best option a man can elect for himself?
But that is part of the sickness of the phrase—dying like a man is supposed to suggest that the man, in his final moments, took control of his fate and chose the terms of his demise. Perhaps this helps explain why, driven to desperation, men commit suicide at such alarming rates. Society has telegraphed that they can’t ask for help, but they can charge toward death and thereby earn respect for dying like men: violently, suddenly, and deliberately.
We aren’t just killing our men, we are cheering them on toward death.
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Self-destructiveness is not the same as self-sacrifice—though adolescent males might be forgiven for missing that distinction. There are many more examples of men nobly getting themselves killed on film and television than there are of men taking on caregiver roles.
What we—and they—desperately need now is more examples of men taking care of themselves, and thereby sharing their lives with others.
Men have downloaded the glamorized imagery of the death wish for long enough. Instead, masculinity should start celebrating life.
Photo Credit: Mario_Guo/Flickr
In fact, this is the basis of the very strong belief of the social construct of being masculine. It started at the early 1900s. The boy scouts of that time were an adjunct to the military and tasked itself to raise boys to become men. Strong, soldiers. Wars were brewing that needed all men to make a stand. We’d never seen wars of that magnitude. Social messaging also created ALOT of it. It also created a hierarchy of gender. One was getting sent to die, so we’re given special privileges. And hence a belief in superiority. Before that, while of… Read more »
You had female soldiers fighting in World War II in the Russian military even flying fighters and bombers in action. Furthermore, you had many women fighting in the various resistance movements in Occupied Europe.
“we are cheering them on toward death.”
Well, George Bush, Senior, and George Bush, Jr., and the Republican Party Propaganda machine along with the corporate controlled media lied to us in sending out people to death in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ever think that some men … heck many men have it within them to be risk takers? That part of the excitement in their lives is to push ;life to the edge? Most of the risk takers are healthy and promote good health and are solid in mind AND body. I’m gonna die like a man in that I AM A MAN. If I die while lugging flag stone for a patio, I died like a man. If I die in my sleep, I died as a man. Who is anyone to dictate how their lives are to be and… Read more »
“That part of the excitement in their lives is to push ;life to the edge? Most of the risk takers are healthy and promote good health and are solid in mind AND body.”
Yeah and you have people on Wall Street who love to take risks as long as they can privatized the profits and the public subsidies their losses.
You said “Selective Service, the government B-plan for military recruitment, is mandatory only for American adult males, … ” “Alongside Turkey, Germany remains the only major NATO country that sill requires its young men to serve in the military. Conscription also still exists in Austria, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Greece and Norway. At 26 months, the longest required military service in Europe is on the island of Cyprus.” What countries presently require mandatory military service from its male citizens? Albania,Armenia,Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bermuda, Brazil, China (PRC), Colombia, Cyprus Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iran, Israel, South Korea, Malaysia, Norway, Russia, Serbia,… Read more »