Are you sure you’re a man?
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This isn’t intended as an insult, though it could be considered as such. This is a thought-provoking concept most men don’t consider in our lives. We don’t go into the deeper thought of what being a man is, or even if “man” is a vocation or a science.
I’m sure you’ve heard the general application of man definition, right?
Whatever created us gave us the proper equipment. We have a love of loose cars and fast women. We create mega companies with our bare hands and eat raw metals on the weekend to keep us regular. The attire is modest, revealing most of our hard bodies. We conduct a delicate dance of smashing each other in the face in hopes the “chick” at the end of the bar will “dude bro” love us enough to mate for three seconds before we get our third Shirley Temple.
I know there are some men out there who are not like this. They obviously have to be broken, right? They “dude bro”love each other, which there’s nothing wrong with. Nothing wrong other than being against the covert contract of “Dude Bro Incorporated,” a subsidiary of “GFYPansy Company.” They aren’t “men,” they’re something different.
What is being a man isn’t a gender, but a proficiency? What if being a man is a craft, much like being a human being?
What if you are applying the art of man wrong in your life?
Are you scared to lose your thought virginity?
Before you go burning down digital churches, let’s face facts. The world is more divided than ever before. Society is split up into subsections of the subsection that have cross sections of near sections. If you aren’t a thing, you aren’t “a thing.”
The easiest way to identify is by the sexes. Easy. Done. Do you have an innie or an outie? Simple binary answer. Poof, God’s Excel sheet is safe from corruption for one more day.
You know there is more than the simple binary answer if you look at the growth of men’s oriented associations. It doesn’t matter if you have what it takes between your legs to be called a man, it only matter if you are “a man.”
You can turn to society next to determine what manhood is. Often it is the goal driven success where you make love to three point five houses and marry one dog to have two point three ostriches.
Of course, this data might be a little off. It is only from 2012.
The point is the void of being a man and not striking success leads to sites, shows, podcasts, YouTube videos, Facebook groups all dedicated to being a man. You have so many man options it might as well be raining men offering you advice on the best way to groom your beard or the best razor to use when picking up a woman from the bar.
Again, bad data. 2012.
With all of this data, there is paralysis. There are so many choices, you can’t choose. Instead, you sit there in front of your beer yelling at it because it allowed the runner from second to score on a bunt. You swear you’ll never use it as a relief pitcher again, yet you order another one because it can’t hurt.
So, what is a man?
Bonus points if you auto answer the question with bad Castlevania writing.
Is he more than a miserable little pile of secrets?
My view is a bit jaded on this one. I had quite a few moments rock my personal identification and change the way I see the world. If you’ve read my other lighter pieces where I delve into my dark history of being sexually abused and where I turned into a monster and hit an innocent, I am sure you know this will be even more light-hearted.
I am a party animal.
I can refute the binary answer.
Yes, I have what it takes between my legs to be called a llama, but that is neither here nor there. I have a mighty beard. I scowl. My skin is a sufficient shade of leather as measured by the Manpendium of 1999.
It wasn’t always like this, though. I was once a simple child, twelve, when this incident first happened. I chatted with someone about something, probably why a beer allowed a runner to score from second on a bunt, when the person smiled and said something quite profound.
“You know what? You’re awesome. You’re not a guy, you’re not a gal. You’re like your own sex. It’s like; men, women, and Matt.”
At first, I thought I was out of a job. There were only two sexes. If I went sex rogue, I would have to turn in my awesome peach fuzz mustache and the finest assembly of man dirt I had on my body. I would do anything to nurture the dirt. I worked hard to get it to the level of filth where it was at already.
I tilted my head like a lost puppy and fluttered my eyelids. She probably thought I was being cute. I think I was having a mild stroke.
“Oh, don’t be silly. There’s someone out there for you who is sexless too. Then there will be four sexes, right?”
This turned my world upside down. I coped with being sexually violated and not identifying with the human race. I struggled with religious connections and salvation because I was unworthy of being saved. I even thought I would be a forever alone man, sailing the seas with a rugged beard that I also swore would never grow.
I had my first moment. I could look at myself as not a man, but as a human being. I could make the options work. I could approach people without fear of reproducing after I said the word “hello.”
I can refute the sex answer
Hey, speaking of sex, your place or mine? No, seriously, we should go to your place. It is hard to have sex on a cot.
I am refreshingly asexual.
I call it refreshingly because if I don’t qualify it, I’ll have a horde of “dude bros” who fill in the void with loving and kind words. They appreciate people that aren’t like them. They encourage individuality often with passionate aggression.
They sometimes hug me with their fists. Sweet guys.
I spent fifteen years without sex. Yes, I had my own fun, but that wasn’t to get pleasure out of it. In fact, I never found pleasure in it. I always did it to get it out of the way. Sex was an inconvenient feeling that got in the way of doing nothing.
I admit, it started off with fear and depression. I hated myself and I was afraid of spreading my seed upon the black Earth. I was going to shepherd in my own brand of little Satanists, with blackjack and hookers! Glitter flames galore! Demonic hot pants!
Except I couldn’t be bothered. Eventually, I learned that I wasn’t as driven by sex as other. We are all driven by sexuality and the carnal state, but some have more control over it. I taught myself how to get over it.
I dated someone for a few months recently. We went at it like rabbits. Two rabbits in bad health and poor physical condition. We ate a lot of carrots. We didn’t hop around a lot.
After the two months, it was over. The rabbit infatuation died and we ended up not really caring for each other.
That’s the way the rabbit sex stops. Not with a bang, but more carrots.
Other than being a little more flirtatious with people because I had sex and Satan didn’t appear to anoint the unborn to be his one-hundredth in command, I don’t care if sex is back in my life. I even try to push it away if I can.
I’d rather have a pizza, in all honesty.
I Can Refute the Success Loop
Gods, Men, and Success. Not only is a bad film of Lifetime, but it is also a state of being for men today. You must have a life bank account with exact change in it to account for all the things you want in life. If you withdraw too much from the bank account, you will not qualify for love or success in any way, shape, or form.
This is all built on fear. To be honest, being a man is built on being afraid.
Johnson in the corner office has the Tesla in the driveway and another Tesla at his home. He spends a lot of time alone with a hole drilled inside of a watermelon, but that must be how he earned all of his money.
Thus, the “Watermelon Fucking Success Course” is born. You can buy into it now for the low payment of your dignity a month.
Yes, being a human is being afraid. Being a man is being more afraid.
You must be afraid of your feelings. You must be afraid of other people having more than you. You must be afraid you’ll never be able to provide for your family. You must have a goal chart on how many times you screwed a watermelon to make you millions.
I see it for what it is because I listen to it so much. I hear the same lyrics in a slightly different song. I hear them using the same mythic studies to get you to buy access to their free Facebook group.
You are exploited for your feelings. You are told not to feel, yet you should feel afraid. If you feel anything other than fear, you will lose your watermelon wife and little seedlings. We need you afraid, but nothing else.
I was depressed. I had a gun to my mouth at nineteen and ready to shoot. I was sexually abused twice. I was physically abused more than I could count. I was mentally abused by Gods, Men and Success so often I thought I was broken.
Then I just saw it happening. When I gave in and gave up the quest to exit God’s door, I saw the fact men were being pushed to be afraid. I was being pushed to be afraid. I was told I was worthless because I wasn’t afraid enough.
I heard three men say the same words at different times. I understood they didn’t understand life either. They were only parroting what they heard from their past. They were kind enough to share their fears with me because that is all they had in life.
They were the sum of their fears, not their life.
The Myth, The Legend: MAN
I know I am going to tweak some noses here when I say this, but being a man is a myth.
It isn’t about how much product you put in your beard to sculpt it into Mount Beardmore.
It isn’t about how many times you screw a watermelon in a month, a day, or a lifetime.
It isn’t even about the thing between your legs, the thing that makes you a MALE.
One great thing about listening to self-help gurus is sometimes they give you nuggets. This one resonated with me, and it drove me to write this out so I didn’t forget it.
“Are you your vocation, or are you your proficiencies?”
There is a difference between being a MAN and being a man.
Being a MAN is the stereotypical fear driven market of masculinity. Everything you can see on the news, read online, or even hear from your coworkers? Those are MEN. They are the “dude bros” adrift in the void, never to understand what being a man is all about.
Men, on the other hand, are the ones who understand they must let go of being a MAN. They don’t need to lift up their kilt, bash in someone’s head with an axe, or talk the finer points of trading used sex watermelon on the open market. They understand that being a man is dropping the posturing and posing. It is instead becoming one with themselves.
You must lose yourself in order to find yourself again, right?
This is the way MEN and men are separated. You lose the MAN because then you become human. You are a true individual, sorted not by your penis size or dangle angle, but your passions and crafts and hobbies. You love, you live, and you exist.
Please don’t buy into the hubris of the Sex Cold Wars. It is time to stop escalating this need to be a MAN and work toward being a decent human.
If people can’t accept you based on this alone, then they shouldn’t mean anything to you in the long run. You have things to do. You have the watermelon to save.
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Photo: Unsplash
This post was originally featured on My Loyalty is Killing Me.