A quick Google image search of “Man Up” and “Woman Up” reveals two distinctly different social interpretations of the meme.
Female results, which are virtually free of profanity, reflect a collaborative push to overcome whatever is holding them back. There are very few celebrity archetypes. The only references to men are the occasional fudging of ‘Man’ with ‘Woman’ in different font styles. Overall, I’d describe the tenor as positive, inclusive, and hopeful. Tending and befriending.
Male results differ. They reveal a pattern that aggressively challenges men, through profanities and images of celebrities (e.g., Mr. T, Sylvester Stallone, Jack Nicholson), to stop being like women, who are characterized as either princesses (implicitly high-maintenance and wimpy) or more pervasively in the derogatory “bitch” category. There is also (predictably) a perceptible military/“prove yourself in combat” theme running through many of the images with a repeated solution simply being to “grow some balls.” Classic alpha-male veneration exuding visceral overtones of fighting or perishing, with a distinct emphasis on the fighting.
Implicit in these male images is the notion that emotions are not only not part of the equation, but they are weakening, a distraction, and if you cry, you are a wuss. That blindly following a social template created by someone else, regardless of how ill-conceived and counter-productive it might be to yourself and society, is the key to successful survival. That soldiering on and pushing through whatever, no matter the mental, physical or spiritual costs, will earn you the respect of your peers, parents, hot women, and/or country. What a crock.
Having the courage to chart one’s own course, to explore, experiment, fail, and keep trying, in the face of immense and intense social pressures to conform, is a true hallmark of an actualized being.
From my perspective, having the courage to chart one’s own course, to explore, experiment, fail, and keep trying, in the face of immense and intense social pressures to conform, is a true hallmark of an actualized being. To, as Socrates brilliantly stated, examine your life… and know thyself. And if a man chooses to adopt “feminine” characteristics (or a woman decides to be more “manly”), in this most challenging process, bucketloads more power to them. The notion of needing to “man up,” at least as defined above, seems rather silly, not to mention potentially dangerous.
Expanding this dynamic to the global order, I argue that this fight or flight mentality is precisely what the world cannot continue to maintain if we are to survive and thrive. The issues, and solutions, are too big, complex, and interconnected for this primal, hormone-based response to crisis to serve at the center of U.S. and other nation’s foreign policies. “Manning up” in the recent Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts has added between $4 and 6 trillion to our debt load, depending on accounting technique (so far…veteran’s expenses will continue until they die), with objectively less-than-desired impacts in terms of democratization and stability. Granted, this will require many years, even decades, to transition. It would be foolhardy to lower our defenses to situations like Russia, the Middle East, the wingnut in North Korea, etc.
This said, I fervently believe the tend and befriend model should be a global goal, which will require many more leaders across the political, military, corporate and media domains whose biochemistry is geared to these ends. Positivity, inclusion, and hope, versus the prevailing fight or perish.
I won’t “Man Up.” I will “Human Up.”
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Originally published on Huffington Post
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Photo by Tom Pumford on Unsplash