This is one of our many responses to our weekly Call for Submissions posts, which was, “Has Science and Technology Softened our Need for Manliness and Brute Strength?”
Out of all the many dimensions of physical prowess, including dexterity, speed, stability, precision, and so on, strength is often proclaimed to be of superior value and relevance to men.
David French’s recent article reinforced the old line that men are supposed to be tough, not like today’s men who allegedly, through the laziness and luxury afforded by advancing technology, have lost their bulky physique. In one sense, French is probably right, we maybe don’t have the physical strength of the average joe from the 50s, or the 1550s. But, what French hides underneath his swift disapproval is a burning question that more men might need to ask themselves: to what extent is physical strength necessary to a sense of masculine identity today?
In one sense, the answer is very circumstantial. Men don’t all live and work in urban, white collar environments with all of the conveniences and infrastructure they offer. Step outside the city and you might see a very different culture where there isn’t a professional service and equipment rental for every physical need.
But, then again, technology is not strictly within the hands of the urbanites.
Coming from a farming community, I have witnessed the investments more affluent farmers make to have equipment that is more automated and minimizes the burdens on their bodies. All of that to say, when we talk about the connection between masculinity and strength, there’s not one right answer because in different places there are different demands on men’s bodies to carry out their work and home responsibilities.
Whatever David French and other defenders of the brute ideal morally judge as true manliness, it cannot be applied wholesale to the various worlds of men.
Should men feel weaker these days?
There is a more insidious side to this issue though: should men feel responsible for (not) being strong? There is a palpable push to shame and blame men who do not meet this one, arbitrarily isolated physical display of male dominance. For example, in the first paragraph of French’s article, he implies that teenagers who are targets of bullying have been culled from the herd because they are visibly weak and can’t defend themselves. He essentially comes to the conclusion that if they had pumped some iron and worked on their dad’s car, they would somehow become immune to peer aggression. I suppose the case can be made that if you knock the big man out, you take his place, so French’s solution to bullying is actually pretty straightforward: become the bully yourself. In his follow-up article, after the backlash to this absurd argument that promotes a culture of bullying, he can’t even acknowledge that he’s put the sprinklers to a slippery slope.
In fact, French doesn’t stop there; he takes on all the “emasculated dads” who need to reclaim their rightful place as both home and homeland security. He uses hollow hypotheticals and anecdotes (basically playing on parents’ fears of their children dying or their homes being invaded) to suggest that if dads don’t hit the gym and bolster those biceps, then they’ll wear the scarlet letter for not being able to perform a very specific selection of physical duties in an emergency. Strength is not the solution to all, or even most, problems in daily life, and while it may come in handy, to argue it is a moral duty of men is to reduce their social role down to that of a workhorse. Men can be more than brute physicality, especially when space is opened for them to participate in other ways. More on this later.
The myth of the weak modern man
French’s article is but one example of a growing myth told by today’s conservatives—that men are becoming weak and losing their ‘natural’ life purpose. They can no longer be the local heroes in their community by helping their new divorcee neighbors unpack moving trucks, replacing flat tires for older women, and rescuing other female tropes in distress. On second thought, most of these examples could be solved by a simple-to-use tool almost anybody can access safely and effectively, like a dolly or a car jack. Or, by including one or two other people to distribute the workload. The conservative narrative of men’s purpose pines for the idyllic past when men and women knew their place in the social order and had their paths scripted out in advance so that they didn’t have to face any bothersome existential questions.
Sounds lovely, right? Actually, those days sucked for a lot of men and women who had all sorts of goals and purposes, but didn’t or couldn’t pursue them because they went off script.
The male claim to strength is so dreadfully moralistic because, as is obvious in this whole discussion, physical strength isn’t an inherent trait of the male sex; if you don’t build it, it won’t come. It doesn’t sprout like genitals in the womb. Men do have an easier time building muscle than women, owing to higher testosterone levels in their bodies, but that hardly means they own strength as a natural right. Exercise communities across the globe—from joggers to weightlifters to sports athletes—know that the easier path is not always the best path, as it leads to complacency and prevents you from testing your boundaries and expanding your potential.
Do men need to be strong?
Maybe “strength”—as defined as the physical ability to lift and manipulate weighted objects—is the appendix of masculine identity; it is for many men a vestigial virtue. Needing to be strong has been a long-standing narrative of dominant male culture, but it is losing its reach in today’s shifting social and cultural environments. In response, French and other gatekeepers of dominant masculinity are floundering to compel men to preserve the old story through damaging moral judgments and threats of emasculation. Don’t get me wrong, there is still a place (in work and recreation) for physical strength to be valued and displayed, but most home and work related tasks today don’t require it. Personally, I would choose quick reflexes, balance, and agility when it comes to my daily tasks, like supervising and protecting my mischievous son. To achieve a relatively seamless dynamic in my home, I would choose patience, communication, and empathy over physical strength every time. All of the above are also tremendously useful in emergencies.
The point is, physical strength is only one way to get the job done. In another of his moralistic anecdotes, French recounted how his strength got his injured son to an ambulance on time; though he gave a respectful nod to his wife, with whom he took turns heaving their child uphill, he dropped the ball on the most important lesson of his own story: that it was coordinated teamwork, not individual physical capacity alone, that ultimately shaved minutes off their mad rush to the ambulance. Most defenses of male strength try to rebuild individual-centred silos of exclusive masculinity and discourage more relational virtues within men.
The necessity of physical strength to survive and thrive in today’s world is quickly diminishing. The argument could be made that strength was never really required, if men had reoriented themselves toward more collaborative and innovative approaches to problem-solving. After all, even in ancient times, people were surrounded by other people and by technology.
Nevertheless, alongside recent social and technological revolutions has come needed reform in the expectations and responsibilities of men and women.
Releasing men from the vestigial virtue of brute strength may be one important step toward opening the field of possibility in how men sculpt their bodies and identities.
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Photo: JD Hancock/Flickr
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Surely, David French supports the reform of mandatory boys’ P.E. Why should he, you ask? Well, he’s concerned about boys being physically weak, isn’t he? Let me make a few observations about the mandatory P.E. of my youth. There was no education in “Physical Education.” None of the coaches taught us how the games of baseball, football, and basketball were played. We also were never shown how to properly throw a baseball, how to toss a football, or how to shoot a basketball. Let me digress at this point. . . . My first personal trainer would vary the workout… Read more »
I need to clarify my own repudiation of David French’s comments. Yes, I realize that exercise is essential to good health. (But, no, I don’t have to participate in a sport in order to gain the approval of my betters so that I hopefully will be admitted to the vaunted community of “real men.”) I dislike David French because he is a bigot. Incidentally, so is the self-centered Arnold Schwarzennegger when he refers to nonathletic men as “girlie men.” There is a form of bigotry directed against sedentary men (and boys, especially boys) who have no interest in sports. This… Read more »
Nothing happened to male strength. It simply had to adapt to changing times. If you live in an area or do a job which requires the natural advantages of male physical strength, you are liable to STILL have said physicality and use it in your life, as needed. Men who define themselves purely on the idea their physical strength defined their manhood were always using a less-than-ideal metric but may have had no choice given the history of the Human species and its proximity to fighting, war, and domination of other Humans and the environment. Strength was an asset whose… Read more »
I agree- in the world of the 21st century,unless you are either a NFL linebacker, a longshoreman or a US Army Ranger, Recon Marine or Navy SEAL, strength more than average is a questionable attribute( members of Special Forces groups like the Green Berets and British SAS tend to be wiry rather than brawny)!
It may a questionable attribute to hang most of your identity on, but a physically weak man on average is an unhealthy man. There are certain innate expectations that our natural physicality requires for us just to be “normal”. We certainly can be doing the same things as women do in modern life, and most of that doesn’t require our physical capabilities that we are otherwise easily able to do. However, it is not a physical normality from an evolutionary standpoint, i.e. how men have evolved compared to women in daily life. If we become only as strong as we… Read more »
Yes, but WHAT is David French advocating in reality- that we all start pumping iron to look like clones of Arnold Schwarzenegger? We don;t have tp BE muscle bound- just be moderately fit!
Hi, Gary. I did not quite understand why you were objecting to Chad’s essay. So, I thank you for clarifying your position. Just a personal note: You might be pleased to know that I’ve been working with a personal trainer on a bodybuilding program for a number of years. Of course, I had gotten married several decades before; and I had contributed to the gene pool by fathering two daughters by the time I placed membership at the health club. I agree with you that exercise is necessary for good health. Exercise can ward off disease. It can save lives.… Read more »
Who is the alpha. The kid with a masters in engineering, working on bleeding edge technology, earning good bank, or the guy living in a low rent apartment, mastering his grip strength by pulling a gas pump handle all day long? Right?
I was always the shortest kid in class, and always bullied. Teachers didn’t care, principals didn’t care, until I started fighting back and breaking noses and bones. Yes, I hit the gym, but that does absolutely nothing for height. I am sure that many parents thought I was a bully to their kid, but when your miscreant spawn starts it, I am protecting myself at all costs.
Exactly right. No one cared. Been there done that. On my own, sink or swim, live or die, shamed and tortured, until I exploded. Not one, but two bullies met there fate in short order, and suddenly my status rose dramatically. That is how it was. There was no posturing, there was only survival in what, for boys, is like a jungle where the fittest survived and to hell with the rest. And that is what needs to be changed. I made it, but most boys do not, and that is simply not a fair test for a young boy… Read more »
Well, you had my skeptical attention for the article, until you dropped this one: “The male claim to strength is so dreadfully moralistic because, as is obvious in this whole discussion, physical strength isn’t an inherent trait of the male sex; if you don’t build it, it won’t come.” That is so close to Sarkeesian’s claim that physical strength differences in men and women are just cultural artifacts, that men are not inherently physically stronger than women, and that it is just mostly that way because we expect it to be culturally. What hogwash. The male claim to physical strength… Read more »
So, I guess the physically weak deserved to be bullied?
Wha?
How did you torture that meaning out of what I said?
A quick skim through and then a canned answer?
Jeesh.
No Bill, not at all. I’ve read you and I’ve read how you life was. i was there also when I was young, but was lucky enough to get out of that so I understand it. Not to speak for Gary, but what I took from his words is that it’s just a fact and nothing more was implied. It is a truism, and we need to guard ourselves from becoming both zealots, and speaking in unrealistic terms as we venture into this discussion. We can’t take the road of so many extremist that we see out there, screeching what… Read more »
I really appreciate your comments, DJ. You make a major contribution to this forum.
I suspect I appear more reasonable in real life than I do online at times.
No worries, I get ya.
My anger was directed at David French, not you. The denigration of sedentary, nonathletic males is based upon offensive stereotypes that are often false. I’ve also noticed in discussions of this sort that strengths such as moral courage are never mentioned, and I think deliberately so. Machismo has no use for moral courage. I get angry when I think of this bigotry being directed against young boys. People like French should deprive themselves of all the medical advances and modern conveniences that have been provided by “feminized” males. The only problem is that he would have to go live in… Read more »
Did I say you insulted me?
No.
Although I appreciate your non-anger, again you read something into what I wrote that I did not say.
I have do have an issue with those who would pose all the natural traits and powers of men, as somehow purely a social construct, which exactly how I read the author’s characterizing the natural gifts of male strength.
Gary, posting in a website’s forum is, in my opinion, not the best way for two individuals to communicate with each other. I suspect in real life we would discover that we are mostly in agreement. Forums and blogs seem to engender conflict. After all, as someone once said, “The rage of the Internet is rage.” Of course, I’ve gotten mad online myself at times!
“The male claim to physical strength is simply a truism. The average man, even when he does not affirmatively exercise is physically stronger on the average than the next 8 women you would sample. Moralistic or not, it is just that way naturally.” Let’s assume this statement of yours is true. Why is it so extremely important to you? My wife is physically weaker than I. (She also was a lot more successful academically in school than I was.) My reaction is “So what?” I have no personal investment in this fact. I don’t feel superior to my wife because… Read more »
Why is what so extremely important to whom?
My reaction is also, so what?
Who said anything about you having to be feeling superior to your wife?
Again, you read far too much into what I said.
I only said truisms; if truisms bother you then so be it.
I’m not bothered by truisms. Of course, I’m aware that women, generally speaking, are physically weaker than men. Needless to say, I’ve been aware of this simple fact ever since I was a very young child.
But this article really has nothing to do with women. You’re the one who raised the issue of women’s comparative physical strength. In fact, you have rejected the article on the basis of an irrelevancy.
I am not the one who raised the issue.
I responded to the assertion of the opposite contained in the article.
If you can’t see that, it makes very little difference what I said, since you are going to read into it anything you want anyway.