‘You can’t make a list of the things that qualify someone for manliness; there’s no checklist. You can’t tell what manly really is.’
This piece is part of a special series on the End of Gender. This series includes bloggers from Role/Reboot, Good Men Project, The Huffington Post, Salon, HyperVocal, Ms. Magazine, YourTango, Psycholog
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I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out what manliness is, what it means to be manly in a world that is trying to break apart gender roles. After about a week of thought, all I came up with were incredibly sexist ideas or descriptions of fraternity members so contrite that even Hollywood would have said I needed to add depth.
Every quality that I have identified as manly is a something that I don’t think is exclusive to men. I think it is manly to take responsibility for your actions, but that is something that every person of every gender should do.
I wanted to throw my hands in the air and say that there is no such thing as manliness, but I knew that wasn’t right. Then someone suggested that one could identify manliness by looking at the President: we always elect the manliest candidate.
Is Obama manly? I think so. He’s smart, he’s articulate, and he’s open to compromise. He has worked with inner city children, and he knows the hardships of life. He appreciates the difficulties everyone faces in life, and he empathizes with the common man. He tries to reconcile disparate opinions, to unite opposing sides for the betterment of all. Is that manly? Well, yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s unique to men.
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That, I think, is part of the point. Traits that can be considered manly are often also womanly. To further complicate things, women can be manly, and men can be womanly. (We want to call it “girly,” don’t we? But that’s just a way to suggest that women are lesser than men, and they aren’t.) Being a manly woman does not mean being “butch.” It means that the woman in question demonstrates a lot of stereotypically manly qualities. Similarly, a womanly man is not a “sissy.”
I consider myself to be manly. I do all the negative stereotypically manly things (suppress my emotions, sometimes be overbearing or overprotective, sexualize pretty much anything I can, etc). But I also do stereotypically womanly things. I am the caregiver, the non-judging ear. I’m the diplomat. My wife is the one who does the confronting. She’s the one who pays the bills. She wears the pants in the family. She knows about cars and about sports.
But while she is manly, she is womanly too. And while I am womanly, I am also manly. I have worked with the underprivileged. I take responsibility for my own actions. I’m smart (relatively). I’m articulate and very open to compromise. I appreciate the difficulties others face, and I don’t judge people based on their position in life. I empathize with the common man. In this sense, I’m almost exactly like Obama. (Yeah, I said it.)
Yet, my wife has all of these traits as well. So do most women I know and respect. And there are a lot of boys (yes, boys) who don’t have these traits. Is being an intellectual manly? I think so. But then, I’m an intellectual. Would I feel the same way if I weren’t? Would I be against books if I didn’t read as much as I do?
Is stoicism manly? I believe it is, but not in a good way. It’s a manly thing that I think is stupid. Men can be emotional. Men should be emotional. Men are fathers, and fathers are parents. We’re not stuck in the ‘50s. Men can be more than the breadwinners. They’re the teachers now, the ones who tuck kids in at night, the ones telling bedtime stories. None of that is even new, but all of it is manly.
Which brings me back around to my initial paradox. Emotion is manly. But stoicism is manly. Manly men are respectable and controlled. But manly men play in the dirt with the kids or run around and play tag with them. That’s a lot of paradox. Then there’s the whole womanly issue. Emotion is womanly. So is playing with the children. It’s manly to cook dinner, but it’s womanly to do it too. Just about every quality I can identify as manly is also a quality of being womanly. The only qualities that don’t fit in this understanding are the ones that biology dictates. It’s not manly to give birth (but it is manly to have children).
So with all these contradictions, all these paradoxes, and all these overlaps, how can I possibly hope to elucidate what it means to be manly? Well, it’s like pornography.
That’s right. Manliness is like porn. Which is not to say that it’s full of bad acting, poor camera work, and completely unbelievable dialogue (though often times, all that is true of manliness). I mean it’s like porn in the way that art is like porn, the way Justice Potter Stewart meant it. You can’t really identify exactly what it is to be manly. There are lots of things that are manly, a whole lot that are not, and some that are sometimes manly and sometimes not. You can’t make a list of the things that qualify someone for manliness; there’s no checklist. You can’t tell what manly really is.
But you know it when you see it.
—Photo apdk/Flickr
Terrible title – but it fits well with the extraordinary hatred of masculinity that is required for political correctness.
The tragic aspect of this is that a young man who is finding his way in life and learning what it is to be a man will read this trash and think it’s true – that masculinity is disgusting, like pornography.
Well done, Mr. Weinberg! Joe, thank you for writing as a married man and speaking a bit personally about your traits and your wife’s traits. I agree with what you’ve written about all ofus possessing manly and womanly traits. I am as feminine and ‘womanly’ a woman can be physically and emotionally. I am also beginning a new life as a single mum aftera very long marriage. I have indeed had to become ‘manly’ in beingthe provider, the stern parent, the ‘look the male suitor in the eye’ parent when the youngmen cime to see my daughters, the negotiator of… Read more »
The urge to make this joke in response to the headline was irresistable:
“Manliness is like pornography… something that gender feminists will do their utmost to destroy at all costs.”
One drawback to focusing on “manliness” is that it’s potentially inhibiting—meaning, that if I suddenly need to sew a button on a shirt or, God forbid, iron a pocket square, do I stop and wonder if anyone will catch me at it because it may be considered unmanly? I recall that my nephew, whom I love and respect, forbade his teenage son from taking tap-dance lessons because he thought the kid might “decide” to turn gay—as though “decisions” like that are really possible. Since the 70’s, a lot of men have been assuming household chores—cleaning, cooking, child care, etc. While… Read more »
I have never heard of a man in the west who wouldn’t clean the kitchen for fear it was unmanly. Maybe because he didn’t want to, or felt it wasn’t his responsibility, but not because of not being manly.
Couples should handle work and domestic chores however they agree to. It’s really no one else’s business who does what in or outside their home.
Interestingly enough I just wrote an article about the same topic…inspired by a TED talk by Tony Porter (the talk is embedded in the post): http://confrontinglove.com/2011/10/04/stop-crying-and-be-a-man-video/
The idea of “man” is changing…our focus should be to be good honest, caring, and compassionate people. There are obviously fundamental differences to being a man or a woman, but this is more in the spiritual realm…of masculine and feminine…but again, masculinity/femininity isn’t necessarily gender specific. This is definitely a topic that needs to be discussed more. Glad to see it!
I’m just glad to see actual facial hair on a photograph on this site, so it’s not all “Men’s Health” mag cover men or Abercrombie & Fitch hairless preppy boys. True progress, true inclusiveness, will mean someday a photo with actual chest hair. Dare to dream….
You’ve assigned manliness and womanliness to activities and discrete attributes which are neither. Paying bills is neither manly nor womanly. A computer can do it. Emotion is neither manly or womanly, rather human. Playing with children is neither manly nor womanly. But, that doesn’t mean there is no such thing as manly or womanly qualities. We bring complementary and overlapping qualities to the table (family). There is a reason children have both a mother and a father, not two of one. For example, men tend to play differently with children than women do. That’s where the manliness and… Read more »
A wrangler in Montana leading tourists on a horseback ride recently turned a horse around and, riding the horse, charged directly toward a grizzly bear three times to drive it away from a little boy on a horse that it was pursuing after losing track of the deer it was originally chasing.
Is this the sort of acts of manliness you’re talking about, Eric? Was this wrangler using his manly abilities to be protector to this young boy?
On foot and unarmed, yes. On a horse, no. Almost anybody could do that since it takes little to no courage, as there isn’t little to no risk.
Being willing to volunteer to do something that has a high likelihood or risk of leading to a burning, violent, or bloody death to save or help for other people.
Haha. 🙂 You don’t know much about horses, do you? 🙂
Seriously, because the horse has to be courageous too. If not, you’re screwed.
It takes courage to ride a horse in the first place. If you think about it, that horse is a live animal with its own brain. It can choose to throw you off at any moment with little to no warning.
Come on, Amber – are you seriously comparing the courage required to ride a horse with charging (unarmed on foot) an attacking bear? The latter is the type of courage I am referring to. I have only ridden a couple of times but work with some horse owners and there are several horse owners in my neighborhood. A 12 year old neighbor girl recently fell off and was inadvertently killed by a kick in the head by the horse It was her own horse that she had ridden hundreds of times. There is risk but the odds of being mauled… Read more »
Sometime women do choose to be firefighters, police officer, or soldiers. It’s less common, but couldn’t that be because women are more likely to think that they couldn’t do a job like that physically?
Sometimes women give their lives for others in more traditional jobs. Nurses go to the battlefront. A teacher dies to save the kids in her classroom when some nut starts shooting at them.
A funny thing is that when women do enormously brave things, we don’t call it womanly. We talk about courage and self-sacrifice or sometimes maternal instinct.
“couldn’t that be because women are more likely to think that they couldn’t do a job like that physically?” Possibly. But, if that is the case, that demonstrates that manliness is distinct from womanliness influenced in part by the physical differences between men and women. “Sometimes women give their lives for others in more traditional jobs.” True, but not nearly as often and when they do, it’s far less often because they are charging into the red zone. “A funny thing is that when women do enormously brave things, we don’t call it womanly. We talk about courage and self-sacrifice… Read more »
A funny thing is that when women do enormously brave things, we don’t call it womanly. We talk about courage and self-sacrifice or sometimes maternal instinct. Its not funny at all. The reason those things aren’t considered womanly is because they have identified as part of being a man (which is if a man in those situations doesn’t do those things he is considered to be open to ridicule about his manhood). My guess is this happens for reasons similar to why despite men being expected to be “providers” for their families it is still considered taboo for a man… Read more »
Only reasonable way to use word “manliness” is to describe it as a traditional masculinity.
If we say that manliness “can change” or feminine manners can be manly too, the word loses it’s meaning.
I am so glad for your ending because I was so worried about the direction you were going to go in with a manliness/porn comparison.
To me the key to manliness is individuality.
As long as its not harming others then everyone should be free to define their manliness on their own terms.
I think someone needs to be bold enough to put out a New Man code. They should really make a big deal out of it too. No half assing. I mean full fledged 10 Commandments across multiple web sites, celebrity endorsements, Ribbon campaign, book tours, tv appearances, the View, the talk, The doctors and all that Jazz.
If I may be so bold as to start with..
Thou shalt Love
& Thou shalt not Masculine shame.
Manliness, like womanliness-all socially constructed and vulnerable to the whims of cultural change. Humanliness should be much more important, I think.