What is the manly way to approach one’s own mortality?
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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.
Men belong in harm’s way; everyone else is merely tolerated.
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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.
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.
Perhaps this helps explain why, driven to desperation, men commit suicide at such alarming rates.
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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.
We aren’t just killing our men, we are cheering them on toward death.
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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.
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.
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Photo: Getty Images
Wel, DJ, the positive role models were hunted into extinct by both men and women.
You are speaking of positive male role models? They were hunted to extinction back in the 80s, and are now shot on sight. They are not allowed because to see them would make men think, and we can’t have that. The next thing we know they will be asking for, like, rights and stuff, refuse to be cannon fodder and bullet shields. But in all seriousness, it was an excellent essay, and the conversation that we need to start having, incorporating into the discussion. This is our movement, and for the first time in our history as a nation we… Read more »
Oh, and we need to bring back the fedora!
You know, it’s funny. The “women and children first” thing. I can’t say why, but it still feels right to me. I don’t know that I could ever get in that lifeboat, knowing that I was taking the place of a woman. (The child part is obvious, and easy to understand) Does that make me sexist? Maybe, in the back of my mind I’m thinking I’m a tough, resilient, resourceful man who will be more likely to find my own way to survive a nautical disaster. I picture myself, in a situation like that, running around and doing my best… Read more »
I’m the idiot that would end up in the water, Anthony, because I’d have to make sure everyone was boarded and safe first…but that’s me, my choice, and I’m trained. The problem is when we expect every man to sacrifice for every woman as a social norm, and when it can actually jeopardize public safety by separating families, wasting time sorting through the line while the ship is going down. When you buy a ticket it includes a seat on a life boat. Ship starts going down, the job is to get as many boats away as fast as possible,… Read more »