Why do men feel the need to prove their masculinity?
Last month, as I flew to a conference, I exchanged small-talk with the guy sitting next to me. I asked him about his three kids and he asked me about my eleven-week-old daughter.
I told him that I get paid to study masculinity, which is true. A few minutes later, the flight attendant came by with the beverage cart and I asked for ginger ale. He asked me if that was “manly enough.” I’m still not sure if he was joking.
But “is that manly enough?” is a question that most guys get asked, somewhat regularly, during the first half of their lives. A guy’s masculinity can be questioned anywhere, by almost anyone, for almost anything: backing down from a fight, adopting an unpopular opinion, or expressing feelings—even something as insignificant as ordering a ginger ale.
The research tells us that this kind of pressure starts during elementary school and continues into a guy’s twenties or thirties; it mostly ends when a guy settles down (whatever that means), though it never entirely goes away—remember actor Jack Palance proving that he was still manly by doing one-armed push-ups when he received an Oscar at age seventy-three?
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We might ask “why?,” but that seems obvious: it’s about proving that you’re one of the guys. As human beings, we need to feel like we belong to a group. Proving that we fit in—that we’re masculine enough to hang with “the guys,” is necessary in some circumstances.
Joining a fraternity, for example, is one way guys try to prove their masculinity. Often, it involves some form of hazing. And although thousands of young men experience this, there are a few hazing deaths every year. Male athletic teams also haze their players, occasionally to the point of severe injury or death. And this is almost exclusively a male phenomenon; dangerous hazing is almost unheard of among sororities and female athletes.
It’s not just about fraternities and teams; in daily life, when a guy gets called “girly,” or “wuss,” or “fag,” he is likely to feel the need to prove himself. Often, it’s more subtle than that—nobody called out Jack Palance at the Oscars, but he was still determined to prove his manliness.
Psychological studies of masculinity help us understand what’s going on: most guys are of middling masculinity. It doesn’t matter how we measure—most guys score close to the middle of the scale.
The research also tells us that most guys think they’re not as masculine as other guys they know, and most guys don’t think they’re as masculine as they ought to be.
In other words, the typical guy thinks he ought to be more masculine. He’s likely to believe that he’s the least masculine guy in the group. From that perspective, it’s no surprise that guys make the effort to prove their masculinity again and again—and that it doesn’t take much prodding, even when it involves doing something stupid.
If we want to stop needing to prove our masculinity—or at least stop some of the crazy behavior that happens because of it—then there are a few things we can do.
First, we can be realistic about where we stand in comparison to everyone else. The vast majority of guys are only kind of masculine; most guys aren’t overly macho or overly wimpy.
Next, we can ask who we’re trying to prove it to—some stranger that just called us out? A group of friends or “brothers”? Some guy in our heads that we think we’re supposed to imitate, like dad or Stone Cold Steve Austin?
Finally, we should consider the risks and benefits of not responding to every challenge to our masculinity. Does it matter if some stranger doesn’t think I’m masculine enough? Will my friends treat me different or throw me out of the group if I don’t rise to the occasion?
If they do, maybe mom was right, and they’re not really my friends.
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Andrew Smiler
Andrew P. Smiler, PhD, is a visiting professor of psychology at Wake Forest University and the president-elect of SPSMM. More information is available on his website.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock
I guess I really don’t understand this whole discussion. Why should anyone have to prove their manhood? If all men had to drop their pants and the tape measures came out, I would definitely fall into the average category. But of course the size of one’s dick doesn’t make a man manlier. I am sure there are some very well-endowed gay men out there, surely they are not manlier than a nig macho guy with a little dick? So is it how mean and tough you are? I know a 110 pound woman black-belt in my Kung Fu quan that… Read more »
Hah! Wherever I am I usually feel confident in the knowledge that I’m the most manly guy in the room and I’m not even straight. To my mind it’ simple. If you are male and possess a measure of compassion, confidence and strength then you are manly. Succumbing to peer pressure is not manly. Being afraid to order the drink you wanted is not manly. And “macho” is not manly, it’s juvenile and pretentious. I wear, drink, eat and say whatever I like, with my boyfriend standing next to me and it has never been seriously suggested to me that… Read more »
all you had to say was
are you man enough to drink it.
a real man
in my opinion
plays by only his rules.
I win
“Next, we can ask who we’re trying to prove it to”
-Noticeably absent from this discussion…trying to impress women!
Guy aren’t trying to impress guys, they’re competing with other guys for women.
Why doesn’t SPSMM understand this and/or why are they trying to hide this fact?
Real men don’t feel the need to prove it. They know it and that’s good enough for them. Traditional masculinity is a social construct anyway. Masculinity changes from generation to generation. Thank God for that. I don’t have to challenge every guy who ogles my wife. I’d be in two or three a day, and those are just not good odds. It’s one thing to identify masculinity with good things like determination, competition, etc, but it’s another to identify it with things like sexual prowess, how much alcohol one can consume, how many people you killed while in prison, or… Read more »
I’m with you. I tend to think that the most masculine thing is to be secure enough in your masculinity not to have to prove it. If you’re constantly trying to prove it, what exactly are you afraid of? On the other side of things, if you’re making fun of someone for being unmanly, then how manly are you, really? I also tend to associate this question with body size. In my experience if you’re a bigger man than average there’s less pressure to show how manly you are, but if you’re shorter than average you feel more pressure. I’m… Read more »
I find it an interesting paradox that it is not very masculine to bow to peer pressure, which is exactly what “proving yourself” is.
when I met my husband and he ordered iced tea, I said, “Real men do not drink iced tea…” I was raised in a very defined matriarchy and let me tell you the men were in a total box – not fun for them… This is one of my concerns for my son, who is 10 – I want him to be able to handle life which basically means some masculinity is required but at the same time, I want him to be able to express his unique perspective and deal with the embarrassment or razzing that he gets because… Read more »
@GC: As you might guess from the article, your story & feelings are quite common. And thanks for the article.
@Daddy files: I said “>dangerous< hazing is almost unheard of among sororities and female athletes." The summaries I've seen suggest that 10-20 guys die or are severely injured every year from hazing; for women, the number is something like 2-3 per decade. I'll also admit that these are estimates; the deaths aren't always identified as hazing.
I would consider myself somewhat a Manly Man. Although, I have never been in a fist fight, don’t know the difference between types of beer and I find cursing in movies hard to swallow at times. I think that the morals that I live up to, are what make me a better man. I can’t do it on my own.
Did you really write that having & initiations are strictly a male phenomenon? Are you kidding?? The sororities at my college put the frats to shame. Not to mention women are FAR more competitive & fatty than guys. Are they proving their femininity? Guys are just competitive. We want to be the strongest, the best looking, the most successful. So we peacock around and do ridiculous things to prove ourselves. So what? You can’t wring that basic human component out of our DNA. It is what it is. Eventually we all grow up and learn to be content. Now put… Read more »
Women are competitive too. They want to be the best and most successful too. It is not an exclusively male trait, as you pointed out about sororities. We’re all human beings. More or less balanced between what has been called the masculine and the feminine side. But these concepts are social constructs which we can choose to ignore (SAHDs for example) or buy into. It is a choice, not fate.
I do tend to assume that I’m the least masculine one in the room and that I would be immediately rejected if the other men found out what a wimp I really am. These are Irrational but powerful and persistent thoughts, thoughts that date back to boyhood. The more rational side of me says that most if not all of the other guys in the room have some version of the same thing going on in their minds and that the truth is that we’re all probably somewhere near the middle of the macho/wimp continuum. Very comforting to have the… Read more »