What does Masculinity mean to you? Kind of related: HomoPhobia As well as: FeminitY And...SexisM In our society today it almost seems as though being masculine is a bad thing - and a lot of women seem to see it as a threat, or a challenge against their own strength. I'm not trying to say that women haven't been seen as the 'lesser gender' throughout history, I'm not trying to say anything against women. I'm trying to speak for masculinity... I think it's something that isn't understood at all by most women I've met. Either that or it's completely misunderstood. In the same way a lot of men have a hard time understanding being feminine, I think a lot of women have an equally hard time understanding being masculine. Society seems to understand how important it is for a woman to be in touch with their femininity, but most men are scoffed for being in touch with their masculinity.. I have more to say on this subject, and I will soon... I just wanted to start the conversation going. Comments? -Zen i agree with you, zen. most men are scoffed at for being in touch with masculinity. but i wonder if it is their masculinity that is being scoffed at, or a presupposed view of masculinity at large that this society has. the whole rough and tough view of masculinity is the one that gets picked on the most, i think, and the one that is believed alot of times, when it might not be a real description of masculinty at all. so this is my question: to all you guys out there...what would you define masculinity as? how would you explain it? i'm really interested in knowing that, especially. also, in a time where sexual preferance is something of a focus, how does that fit in with typical masculinity and femininity issues? peace~sarah
I think masculinity gets scoffed at because people confuse masculinity for patriarchy- blind power, dumb power, subjagation, (etc). It's a sad backlash, but this backlash certainly didn't come out of nothing, not that that validates it. It is disappointing- really sad - that masculinity has bad connotations when it simply means the is-ness of male. The intrinsic-ness of being male (or female) is positive, and harms none. Men aren't grills, steaks, mud, and trucks. These are just distractions, usually to sell something. We get bombarded by these distractions so much, before you know it, someone is repeating them, without realizing it. As for society, I like what I found in Don'tQuoteThat. "..Yes, but we already know that mainstream culture is just a personified feedback loop, eating its on feces, philosophizing about contemplating its navel, and emotionally masturbating.." Accepting what society says, especially where the definition and "place" of something is concerned is usually depressing and counterproductive. What is this society we speak of? Is society just what everyone gets the same of, on the hour, every hour? (Mass media) What is the is-ness of being a man? Can one really define masculinity or feminity, or just know it and feel it? I'm glad you created this page, Zen, it started me thinking.
Oh boy, here I go. First off, I'll start with the common misconception of Masculinity. It's a 'player' so to speak. He is one who does not care about women, does not feel, isn't intelligent. He is violent and doesn't care about others. Selfish, strong, everything handed to him. Given a better chance in life simply because he is male. Often though of as dangerous, a rapist and murderer waiting for the oppurtunity. This very line of thought drives many people to commiting these acts I might add. Now true masculinity, I believe, is simply being strong when not needed. Taking action when there is no time for thought. It represents stability, an outgoing manner and helping others. I also believe that there is a third type of masculinity, which is a cross between these two. To me personally, being simply masculine isn't enough to be a 'man.' Being strong becomes always being strong, taking action becomes aggresion and anger etc. and the difference between masculinity and femininity in my mind is that women are told to be feminine while men are supposedly already tough and so being abusive is often seen as good for them, which means masculinity is more forced. (I'm gonna get some flak for that one.) I'd also like to point out that I speak for myself in these remarks. I've met many men unconcerned with masculinity and that male image since going to camp. This subject was harder than I thought to write about, but I think it's because I'm tired. Anyways, I'll be back.
Spike, and I forgot to sign I guess... I wonder, if I were a boy, what kind of boy would I be? I admire and aspire to a lot of rather male-ish tendancies as a girl. If I were a boy, would I feel the same sort of way about girls? What things about girls would I love, and want to be more like? And most important of all, what would I wear? ;) I'd give $4000 to swap genders for a couple months. It'd be like a whole different kind of traveling. I imagine I'd suck at it at first, but then I'd get used to it... oh man, that'd be so cool. reanna I'd like to say more about masculinity, and perhaps make more sense. I just wrote on the homophobia page and these subjects always get me thinking. I can never know what it's like being a women, just as a women can't know what it's like being a man. All I seem to hear nowadays is that women 'understand' and they 'know' and it just really pisses me off that there are so many men trying to make up for our past patriarchy society. Women are in some sort of goddess state right now and I'm tired of being so damn subordinate and holding things in and telling them I'm fine and smiling. Women take masculinity as a joke, and yet femininity is an extremely touchy, serious subject. So now that I've sorted that out, I'll get on to the subject at hand. Masculinity is, as I said before, three seperate things. Today I shall delve into male masculinity as far as I dare. Male masculinity is truly what women want to understand I think. Oh I'd like to hear from women what questions you have about masculinity cause I can try to answer them, although I am what youd call a typical male in my baises. Male masculinity is aggression, anger and sexual pissed off-ness for lack of a better phrase. I've heard so many women say 'I could kick your ass' or 'I get SO mad sometimes' and I've even seen and heard women in these so called feelings. I sit there quietly the entire time and think to myself how pitiful her emotions are. I feel anger and hate and aggression on levels that cannot be explained. Maybe I'm unique in these feelings, I don't know. Women seem to act big like that because they're threatened by men, making a mental shield so that they can feel safe. Male masculinity is being strong, not being afraid, (not pretending to not be afraid, but actually learning to not be afraid) helping those who /need/ it and just being stable and knowing when to take action. A smooth operator. I've just painted the picture of a super hero in a sense, but I don't mean that male masculinity is perfect like that. Just that they tend to lean that way a bit more than others. I need to go make tuna now, later. -Spik n Span
anyway. i think i'm done for now. -Katgrrl There's one thing I think I should clear up. Everyone has masculine and feminine sides. Every woman and every man can fight hate and kill, it being an instinct of survival. Every man and woman can be caring and sensitive. What I'm talking about is the actual capacity for anger. It takes less for me to be angry enough to be pushed into a fight and takes more to hold things in. I believe Evan is right everyone has all emotions there's no gender specific ones but there are chemical differences and differences in being raised that show at early ages which make emotions more extreme for one or the other gender. I think that's what I'm trying to say. As always, however, I'm confused after writing this and need to absorb it myself before I can tell for sure if this seems to hold any truth. -Spike This is a jump for me. Um, being female never really meshed with my personality much. When I was about ten, I cut my hair and dress like a guy and people thought I was...there's still a little of that in me, I think. One of the things is, I want to be able to experience masculinity. I have to admit, I envy men their bodies. Strong and straight and made for fighting and adventuring and all I long to do. I am not by nature strong. I am not by nature fit for fighting. Sometimes I hate being Wind, because that's what I am, I'm supposed to be good at, flying about and being uncatchable, untouchable, but can't I also be a man of the world, a fighter, an equal, a sexual being but not firstly, an Equal only in the sense that I can try as hard as anyone, be as dirty, drink as much (or little) cry as hard?...I hate never being able to see a guy eye to eye. How, every time I speak to one, I am, by my own admission, a object of conquest to them. Not necessarily a worthy one, but that's the idea. That's what I'm supposed to be. Not finished, but I gotta go. I'll rewrite this later 'cause it makes no sense. Wind. Okay. So. I both glorified and detested male qualities throughout most of my teenage years. Glorified all the physical qualities, mostly because as a girl in kung fu I had to at least work twice as hard to reach the physical strength and prowess of my male peers and even my male students. Glorified the fact that guys didn't cry at the drop of a hat. Identified with male characters in flims and books, and to a point objectified the female charaters Now I work and live with carpenters, construction workers and landscape laborers, the "manliest" men around besides marines, I guess. We get along very well. They don't give me shit about being female, so I don't give them shit about being male. I've grown accustomed to the way they think about women (incomprehenceble objects of desire, friends with the "inside scoop", glorified mother figures), the world (a playground and/or a battlefield, depending on the day) and each other (allies, teammates, objects of ammusement and sometimes ridicule, enemies). I'm used to their tesosterone rushes and dramatic displays of disgust over their paychecks and the office management. My coworkers tend to think in black and white, and simplify things the way my female friends and aquaintences tend to complicate and see things in ever-growing shades of gray. Now, these could be observations on the construction worker population rather than males in general, but keep in mind the contstruction trade is made up of mostly males. And don't get the idea that these guys aren't intelligent And another thing I've observed about masculinity: friendships between males are a lot of times more honest than those between females. Although means of affection are limited, there is a very definite brotherhood and trust between men who live and work in close quarters. Backstabbing is fairly non-existant Spike is right -Samantha
--- Okay, so I finally decided to write on this page, when I read the line on the FeminitY page about women being expected to be helpless. And my thought is... everyone these days is expected to be helpless these days... and also expected to be able to keep up themselves in the ratraces of life. I wrote a letter to the nbtsc-l today that touched on this topic... I'm reading a lot of the writings of a guy named Wendell Berry, and in at least one of his books he talks about the difference between the nurture mentality, and the exploiting mentality. And that the nurture mentality is possible only when a person looks at the whole, accepts the whole, and is creating and caring for the health of everything around one. And the exploiting mentality is that which we see in the workforce... we have to go out, work and conqueror. Mr Berry credits society with having changed to put emphisis on the exploitation mentality at the time of industrialization when cottage industries were abandoned. And... Men were the first ones into the workforce. The exploitation mentality was first assigned to men. They had to be out there, working, hard, without feeling, without attachment. So the explotitation mentality became known as "masculinity". And the women who were left at home, and could still care for the farms and families, continued with the "nurturing" aspect of life, until it was thought that that was feminine. When really... the idea of nurturing... of caring for things, working for the health of all, using ones labour creatively and lovingly... that belongs just as much to males and females. (I really like the old term Husbandry, which is now forgotten.) - anyway... that's just my two cents. -Christy So, so, so ......yeah. I've been wanting to write on this page but have been up untill now writing on the homophobia page. For now all I have to say is that anger, rage, sensitivity, passiveness, all these things we tend to either associate with masculine or feminine traits are Human traits. I apprecitate spikes willingness to walk out on a limb in the service of honesty. I'lll be back. -----------Evan OOooooh....smart comment, Evan. They're all just human traits. We forget that sometimes. It is only a socially accepted way of thinking that makes any of those tendencies...anger, rage, sensitivity... become naturally associated with either gender. Masculine can apply to girls very easily if you think about it Rad, Evan. That's my mind too. Polarity is bunk. Assigning an attribute to Yen, the opposite to Yang, continuing till they're gone and then throwing the genders on either leaves for a pretty narrow world. If you believe in these restrictions, if being cute and passive is girly and being tough and agressive is boyish, or any other set of behaviorisms, they might as well be real because it's going to restrict/affect you just the same. Throw the baby out with the bathwater. I don't believe in any gender-roles, and I'm freer for it. So fer now, I'm not really going to look at or respond to anything thats been written already. I just wanna try and say my own piece. But damn this is hard cuz there is so much to this that to distill it all down to a post is a challenge if not an impossiblity. So heres it Tiz anyway: Because women have historically been expected to stay home and raise the children little girls have often had a real person on hand to model their femmininity after. Boys on the otherhand have for generations been raised by fathers that if not physically absent were often absent emotionally .Because of this many fathers are enigmatic figures to their sons and so is masculinity. Without an accessable role model to emulate, understand, and to reassure us that we do indeed belong to that group called "men" we often find ourselves guessing what exactly it means to be a man. I think that it's noteworthy that many of the negative things we associate with masculinity (physical, sexual, emotional abuse) are often not the acts of someone who generally feels like a man but by someone who does not unless they can degrade someone else. More often the most horrific things men are capable of are not the fruits of someone who feels like a man but by someone who's own experience of masculinity has taught them that the only way they can be a man is by degrading others. men trying to feel like a man the only way they know how. and can only find and who the opposite. Often it is perpitrated by men who don't feel like by oppressing others they will feel more like men. /Masculinity is all about not feeling like a man and the often Most of my life I haven't felt like a man. When I look at myself I see my insecurities, my vulnerability, my imperfections, my shyness, my confusion and none of it is compatible with the deffinition of manhood I had in my head. I know me. I know me at my most femmini, better than anyone else. And I've grown up in a society were only rarely am I allowed to see other men at anything other than their best. In general i think this is true. (PLEASE DON'T COMMENT ON THIS YET. I GOTTA HEAD ACHE, BUT WILL COME BACK AND FINISH THIS LATER -----------EVAN *I know you aint done but I'd like to say that is the most accurate and confusing thing I've ever heard. -Spike. Ok...I wasn't gonna write on this page, but...what can I say, emotions got the better of me. First of all, I'm female. So yeah, I can't know first hand what it's like to be male. I'm not pretending to know firsthand. I'm just stating my oppinions on this whole complicated, confusing subject, so bear with me. *draws deep breath* I don't believe males are innately that much different than females except annatomically. I don't believe that males are more aggressive from birth. I don't believe that they have a greater capacity or urge to be violent, angry, protect those weaker than themselves, be strong, be tough, be fearless, etc. etc. I believe that people are people. As others have already said on this page, anger, violence, compassion, sensitivity, etc. are all HUMAN traits. In the beginning, there aren't really any gender-specific traits, and definitely not gender-specific emotions. As soon as you're born though, the cultural conditioning starts. Boys are raised to be what generations upon generations upon generations before them believed was "manly" and "masculine," as girls are raised to be what our ancestors thought "womanly" and "feminine." If your parents tell you that "real" men don't cry, so you can't either, then you start to believe it. If your parents tell you that you're always going to picked on in life if you let people see that you're vulnerable or scared, you start be believe that too, and act accordingly. I guess the whole point I'm trying to make is just that I don't really believe there are "masculine" and "feminine" traits, other than the stereotypical ones that have been hammered into our heads since day one. Have any of you read the book "Real Boys" by William Pollack?(not sure if I got his name right) It's sort of a "Reviving Ophelia" for boys, if you will. Damn good book. Damn sad book. Really opened my eyes and made me think. Read it. Guess that's all I have to say for now. Peace. ~Becky~ *You make a nice point Becky and at birth I don't believe males and females are that much different. -Spike I'm inclined to agree with Becky that boys are not inherently more violent/aggressive, etc, whatever, from birth. And yet, living in my house . . . hmm. I've got two brothers, 7 and 4...so when I was 9, I started watching them, seeing how they grew up. And its amazing. At very very very young ages, you know, two or so, my sister would be sitting hold a doll and my brother would be making two trucks run into each other and yelling "bam bam bam!" My family never encouraged these stereotypes...we had dolls, etc. available to all the kids. At first, my mother had decided that she wasn't going to allow toy guns in the house. When my brother started making them out of toilet paper tubes or legos, she reletned and let him have some. I never knew if that was a good idea or not. And now I wonder . . . Why are the boys so much more inclined to play with the guns and the trucks and eveything? My sister's been known to pick up the trucks sometimes and then of course, my brother had a few months where he carried around his doll. Where do you they get those inclintations? What prompted them? If they are so alike at birth, where do those large differeces come from? My dad has been around plenty as has mom. Both good role models in general. So what happened? Why do kids descend into stereotypes at such a young age....so ARE they only stereotypes? ~Jasmine
I'm not sure what I have to say on this subject, other than my humble observations, so here I go..
I remember being at a party when I was about 13. There were 8 or 9 guys there, and 3 or 4 girls. The guys all decided to go play football, and us girls...watched. we watched. we watched the guys playing and having fun and laughing and talking, and we W.A.T.C.H.E.D. We made fun of the boys, singing that song "macho macho man" while they were running around, taking off their shirts and tackling each other. To me this has always been my picture of "masculine." showing off, sweating.. and then going back and playing violent video games.
I'd always prided my ability to go kick it with the guys. But at this party I couldn't for some reason, it was really like they had this field up around them that i could't penetrate. They were the typical guys and I was a girl. none of us questioned it then.
But what made us slide into those roles? We'd never been like that before, or after. We were all on the same swim team, so whether you were a guy or girl ONLY mattered in terms of which locker room you went to. We were concerned with skill, not with what gender you were.
masculine is defined in the dictionary as, "1. of or pertaining to men or boys; male." well that tells us a lot. :P
i've never wanted to be "masculine" but i've never wanted to be "feminine" either. both seemed so hopelessly stuck in one spot, with no room for growth. one was meek one was agressive. one was soft hands and one was sweat. This is kind of just repeating what i wrote on the feminity page, but it still pertains. I think people should judge what is valuable of each of those "types" to them, and accomodate that into themselves accordingly. People are people. it's all about conscious decisions, and what you deem valuable.
ok when I first started reading this I had all planned out what I was going to say but then everything became all complicated. I am a girl. I believe that all people carry masculine and feminine parts to them however we rarely express both. I often define myslef as being more masculine then fenimine however after reading this I think that I am not at all. looking at all my anger and rage from this outside standpoint makes me think how pathetic I look and how 'week I really am. I am not saying I am not masculine at all because that would disregard my previous statement. I have not yet read th femininity page but I am going to. I think that my stereotype of men and masculinity is really meesed up but it is there. when I here the word masculine I often think of huge abusive men who drink a lot and watch football on tv. now I understand that that is a stereotype and not really true at all (maybe there are some men, a lot of men, out there like that but still)masculinity aside from my stereotypes means strength, courage and power. I think that men and women have all of those traits and men are more prone to showing it. I am a hardcore feminist and it is hard for me to not come on here and complain however I am not going to. I think that.....stereotyps fuck you over.if you can look beyond them then life becomes so much easier. ~Laurel Ohhh, my image of masculinity... Strong, lithe, blond, standing in a field, world at your touch, you have the power to be...so many things...free, unworried, so many things I love about you, Man, yet little things, how dreadfully wonderfull when a man can do little things, when he's good at plaiting hair, or chefing, or pulling out splinters, or wiping tears, when he's not afraid to get in close, when you can be gentler than I...but then what am I good for? ~whispering wind NBTSWikiWiki | Recent Changes Edited 57 times, last edited on April 6, 2001 by 169.207.205.50. © 2000 NBTSC Webmasters |
