Are we all becoming women?
Like many guys, I have had this very bizarre relationship to my manhood, my nuts, my machismo, my guy-ness, that thing that continues to make me want to have sex with my wife whenever she gives me the high sign.
I’m 46 now, and for the last couple of years I have been powerlifting under the supervision of a former Russian kick-boxer who, I suspect, killed more than a few guys with his bare hands as an assassin back in his home country. Something about the way his eyes widened into these jet-black saucers the few times we sparred scares the living shit out of me. Anyhow, I have put on about 25 pounds of muscle and now go about 235 pounds across my 6’ 3” frame. I still eat too much ice cream, so it’s not like I have a six-pack or anything. But I am kinda ripped for an old bastard. At least that is what Elena, my wife, tells me when she is kind enough to feed my fragile ego.
Konstantin keeps asking me, “Why are you working out so hard?” Sometimes I tell him it’s to race some guy in the pool or on my bike, which are my other two hobbies. But he doesn’t really believe me. The other day I finally confessed, “It’s because I am still looking for my balls.” He laughed because the comment came as just a continuation of our gym banter that often includes a discussion of our mutual friends, their funny proclivities (one guy swears that he gets his asshole bleached in a weird psycho-sexual fantasy), and their manhood. He didn’t know that I was actually being serious.
I don’t know where it started. Maybe it was growing up in the ultra-liberal town of Amherst, Massachusetts where men wore their hair in ponytails and women preferred crew cuts. But I was never confident in my nuts. I didn’t really know where they might be, to be honest. It didn’t help that I was one of those kids who was huge for his age. I got beat up for being big and for being weird and introspective. I walked away rather than fighting back. Dumb ass was I.
Anyhow, my 46 years have been one long search for some definition of manhood that I could actually live with. The fact that I still go see Konstantin three times a week and throw around ridiculous amounts of weight (during the summer he drives down to our summer house in Westport and straps me to a large tire and makes me drag it up and down the beach at a dead sprint) shows that I really haven’t advanced the ball too far.
But I have tried. And in that, most of the guys I know are similarly confused by the state of their genitals—either they walk around like they’re hung as a cover for having nothing, or are just totally confused by a world of SAHDs (stay-at-home dads) where, to be men, we seem to need to be more like women.
♦◊♦
Perhaps, rather than spending endless posts dissecting the changing gender roles for men, we should just look to the natural kingdom for some simple guidelines. The grouper fish can turn from female to male early in its lifespan to reproduce, but in the end all individuals end up female.
Perhaps even more instructive is the clownfish, of Nemo fame, who live in groups with a strict hierarchy based on size. The largest fish is the female. The next largest is the breeding male. All others are non-breeding males. When the female dies, everyone moves up a peg. The breeding male becomes female and the largest of the non-breeding males becomes the breeding male.
This comes as confirmation of the natural order of things for a certain kind of man, the sensitive ones in our 40s who no longer wear the pants, who understand our role as serving the needs of our wives and questioning the loss of football, beer bongs, and the American way. If Nemo is destined for womanhood, it clears up a lot. Really, there is a lot less to debate in these pages and elsewhere.
Here’s a rough timeline on how it goes. Exact timing and conditions can vary man to man. But the endpoint is obviously the same: female.
Birth to 15: Desire to be a policeman, maybe president for those who think too much about it, perhaps ballerina for men with cross-dressing tendencies from day one (which actually might turn out to ease the pain of transitioning later on). Play with guns. Learn to throw football. In my house, learn to cook.
15 to 25: Booze and babes. Let’s get serious. Prime-time manhood in these years—going to frat parties, destroying stuff, going to the library to look like you’re studying in hopes of hooking up. For the athletically inclined, pump some iron, beat some heads. Periodic visits to the drunk tank to dry out. Animal House on repeat on home DVR.
25-35: Get serious; lose your balls, at least in part. Mammary glands make their first appearance. Find a real job. Maybe get married. Buy a house? Have some kids. Golf takes an increasing role in your life as an escape from reality. The 401(k) becomes a four-letter word intended to inflict pain.
35-45: Breasts becoming more pronounced. To cover this reality you get the biggest house you can, two if you can afford it. In addition to the minivan, you drive a Ferrari. If this doesn’t work, get a divorce and marry the woman half your age you met at your 20th college reunion where she was working the bar.
45-55: Crisis sets in. Many Republicans begin to vote democratic. Interest in the NFL and SportsCenter wanes. You start to read romance novels. And watch Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice over and over again. Develop a strange proclivity for pink underwear. Hire personal shopper.
55 on: Balls shrivel away to nothing. Manhood gone. No distinction between Clownfish and Homo Sapiens.
♦◊♦
That last section was a joke, by the way. I was poking fun at myself and my cadre of men looking for some semblance of the caveman we once knew we were. I think it comes down to what a close friend of mine—a relationship shaman, wise beyond his 30-something years, who was once a white-man-rapper-drug-addict and is now a software programmer who is married with two kids—once told me. Think of Will Ferrell as Chaz in the Wedding Crashers, “Ma, the Meatloaf!”
Anyhow, this guy once told me, with regard to marriage, “You can do it the hard way or the easy way with your wife, Tom. The easy way is to agree with her right away no matter what. The hard way is to fight the good fight, leave your blood on the floor, and then agree with her at some point in the future. It’s up to you.”
♦◊♦
Chaz is not a role model, though I admit that little clip is one of my all-time favorites, making me cry with laughter out of some politically-incorrect, non-rational sense of humor.
But the question remains: how do we find our balls while still being good husbands and fathers?
That’s the central dilemma for guys of my generation. For some it involves embracing their more emotional, sensitive sides. To be honest, I have cried plenty, sometimes in the fetal position when my life was really falling apart a few years back. But I’m over that now. When in doubt, I go back to Konstantin, listen to his tales about the KGB, and do some insanely hard bench press sets—my personal version of steroid treatments, without the Barry Bonds shrinkage.
The Good Men Project is many different things to our readers, writers, and various contributors. But one thing I am quite sure it is to all of us, men and women alike, is a discussion about what it means to be a man in 2011. You know, a guy with balls. A guy who plays hard, thinks straight but not too deeply, and likes to hunt elk.
That would be me.
Almost.
—Main photo Flickr/Dr. Alfred Bester who explains: “Patient came in with pain and mass in right testicle. Scheduled for removal the next day, but he was very disappointed in the fact that he would not be allowed to see it, as it had to go to pathology, so he asked me to take a picture for him. Images and testicle taken with patient’s permission.”
—Clownfish photo Flick/OurTechClub
Some of these commentators need to acquire a sense of humour with far more urgency than any sort of testicular enhancement.
Stop blaming your lack of masculinity for your problems and accept that that being feminine isn’t gross, icky icky girl stuff, only then will you be truly comfortable in your masculinity, because your also comfortable with a lack of masculinity.
This article is stupid and full of wrong assumptions. Being a good provider for your family does not get in the way of your “manliness”, it gets in the way of some of your impulses. Impulse control is an incredibly manly thing.
I like the subject of this post that men are constantly searching for affirmation about their own masculinity, I think you could have skipped the middle section regarding beer bonging and breaking things. Yeah it’s a part (however that part manifested in each man’s life and it may have been something less Animal House and more like sitting home alone with a joint and some beers talking philosophy depending) but it’s hardly the end of the road when you hit 40+. I would have liked to read more about the issue that men are up against their own image of… Read more »
I think that, for any man, the question of masculinity is resolved mainly by how the woman in his life regards him. If he’s in a punishing relationship, he may spend the rest of his life on a quest for his balls…no matter how fit he is or how much testosterone his body spits out. Masculinity is in our heads, I think, not in our bodies. I’ve known flabby men who rarely get out of their chairs but who are at peace with themselves and with their own definition of gender. I’ve always envied such guys. How could they be… Read more »
This is really dumb. Like, really, really dumb. It’s sexist against women, it’s sexist against men and it’s written by a dude who never spent enough time on anthropology to learn how bullshit the cartoon caveman image is as a depiction of actual hunter-gatherer society (especially regarding the treatment of gender roles in said societies). It also continues the long-standing tradition of bring irrelevant and poorly considered anecdotes about completely different species into the discussion of human sexuality. Such comments display a total ignorance of natural science and serve only to muddle the debate and stymie meaningful discussion. What the… Read more »
Website Trackback Link…
[…]the time to read or visit the content or sites we have linked to below the[…]…
I understand the thought behind “finding your balls”. Its a degree of confidence in your own masculinity. Something I feel is a strength actually. For those people who aren’t constantly striving to prove their masculinity, they really aren’t as motivated to be a better man (whatever that may mean to you). In my understanding of it, men are driven to provide for their family, to solve problems, to create solutions. Making sure that you have the tools to do it, functional strength & intellect, are something that you need to maintain, hence, the intense physical exercise as well as the… Read more »
It’s entirely possible that masculinity in this culture is equated with violence and dominance.
It’s really troubling that you see this as a problem with yourself, not being violent and dominant enough, instead of a problem with masculinity, as a concept.
Luckily, male-sexed people younger than you are revising this definition every day. Too bad you’re still stuck in the 70s, though. It must suck to be that chained to the gender binary.
WTF is that fleshy thing in the first picture??? Those are definitely NOT balls … AKA testicles.
This post is stupid. So you become a fat, boring old dork and claim that makes you a WOMAN?
No… it makes you a fat, boring old dork. FFS
I think homosexual men have balls. And they don’t ever have to agree with women if they don’t want to.
Not having balls doesn’t make you a woman. It makes you a man without balls. Maybe if you had a pair, you’d recognize women as more than just anyone without a scrotum.
@ Barefoot
That’s mean.
In college on the wrestling team we trained with a russian gold medalist. I got the same sense from him. We wrestled for fun and sport, but I think he learned it because he was fighting off KGB agents. I’m not so sure about the increasing spinelessness of the male species, but I did like the same sentiment as posed by Campbell Scott in the opening scene of the movie roger dodger, where he comes to the conclusion that eventually men will be useless pawns in the game of life run wholly by women.
Most men doesn’t have the balls to mentor the younger generation. So yeah, most men are self-centered and spineless and doesn’t care to educate, masculate and affirm the younger generation.
Sorry that that comment had to come from another guy. Guy to guy…
This is unnecessary and probably cruel.
Tom,
I liked this and I’m sorry I didn’t see it before. I grew up in a gladiator farm neighborhood as an intellectual kid, but learned to fight pretty well. I didn’t think I was masculine enough, I guess, so then I did two hitches in the Army. I slept with a lot of women, usually in relationships, however. I took about eight years of karate and aikido. I’m still terrified of other men and myself too, I guess, however.
I think that there is a role for a distinctive, non exploitive masculinity.
Want to truly be a MAN for U.S. women!
Go make a lot of MONEY, and she will luv you, for a while.
Or, go become a son of ah bitchn’ bad ass BadBoy, and she will luv you, maybe till you die.
But, you will be a truly Loved MAN, if you go get yourself a Dog!
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -Robert A. Heinlein Rick Rescorla said that a man dropped naked into the bush should have something to wear and something to eat by the end of the day. By the end of the… Read more »
Em, I’ve heard Tony Porter-A very persuasive presenter to men about manhood and boyhood. Yes, some men like the aura of power and privilege-yet they are men, but there’s not a mature or courageous man worth his salt among them. The issues you’ve seemedto have gravitated to is the reason for TGMP-let’s improve/reclaim our manhood so that we influence boys to grow into the kind of men we wish we were. Tom is flexing his wings of free speech and sharing-isn’t there room for praising the effort? I just don’t understand the post-so much fear-based words and (like previous post)… Read more »
Tom,
Great article. Its a shame some cannot keep it in the context you had implied. I enjoy your work and perspective. Much of it hits a bit too close to home.
I did like the photo. It is actually an example of a tumor in the testis in a radical orchiectomy specimen.
Nice post Tom…’provocative’ and elicited deep and somewhat presumptuous thoughts and projections about your self-hood from Emily who had you on her couch for awhile, before she (beta dad-assisted) lightened up; yet didn’t yet seem to recognize the courage (a.k.a. [yes I’m going to say it] balls) to share yourself, implying narcissism, and poor ego strength etc (a dead giveaway you were on her professional couch). Shame she kicked you you-know-where! Shame she couldn’t or wouldn’t tease out some questions from a ‘curious-ally’ stance. You, like she, like me haven’t arrived yet at the station of fully actualized selves. We’re… Read more »
It’s not my job to be Tom’s therapist or his sociology or political economy teacher, and I wasn’t intending to be. I just wanted to question his intentions in writing this article this way – particularly in this proselytizing format – and without a clear intention of satire (I still don’t think he meant this as satire). I think I was also concerned that others would overvalue it (and feel demeaned, disenfranchised, or disrespected if they are women or be encouraged to engage in this type of neurotic, falsely entitled, “masculinity” if they are men). This article reminds me of… Read more »
Sorry to burst your bubble but standing up peeing is pretty much the last bastion of ‘male only’ things. That is, without getting the toilet messy. The only way to find something new and innovative is to take on some traditionally feminine things. But yes, it’s not going to be easy being the pioneer who regularly waxes… It takes sacrifice. Namely, numbness in the groin. JK. Elk hunting? Sarah Palin does that from a HELICOPTER while wearing lipstick (not an endorsement of Palin or hunting defenseless animals). What does it mean for something to be ‘manly’ if women can do… Read more »
I’m a former pro athlete (Dodgers) who lost my wife to cancer at 35 four years ago, and am now the single dad to two amazing boys. I get it that we fall into the routine of family life and let the dreams go. But we don’t have to. Not even when you have to balance a career with full-time care for your kids.
While it might be lighthearted, this guy obviously has to use physical strength (and punishment) as his defense. I am not sure what he is defending himself against, but it is obviously what he wraps himself in when he feels lost and inadequate.