Men, manhood and manliness

[Guy]

I am somewhat disappointed to find out that men don't have those conversations about shedding societal definitions of manhood,

Again speaking solely from my own experience, I've never known men to have conversations among themselves about this, but I have known some who will have conversations with women about it, or with themselves.

This expectation that I had previous to talking to you all is probably the direct result of growing up in geek culture, where machismo was not prized, but knowledge and honesty were.

I think honestly is a pretty common standard for masculinity, as in "a man's only as good as his word," the chivalric virtue of truth, heroes like Davey Crockett reputed to never tell lies (whether or not it was true is another matter), etc. Many of the male heroes of literature prized honesty even when they were alpha male types, like Beowulf. Knowledge was often associated with older men, like Merlin, or your various Jedi masters, or virtually any role played by Sean Connery or Liam Neeson. Being well educated was considered essential for a Southern gentleman. Courtly manners were, too, yet so was physical courage, leading men in battle, dueling, stuff like that.

And why I flounder when I interact with men who are very much bought into the one "twue" way to be a man. I forget that machismo is even an option until I am confronted with it.

Residing in the southern U.S. I can't escape it, but I still tend to regard them as I would a different species. More than once when I go somewhere my car is the only sedan in the parking lot. All other vehicles are trucks.

I do wonder if anyone else does find that the "manliness" as defined in comic book heroes differs vastly from the "manliness" defined by your typical action movie hero/war movie?

Spiderman was always my favorite. Even though he was a superhero, he was still a bookworm, science geek and taken advantage of in his normal life. I always thought the character was very relatable.

 

[skip.knox]

(@Nihal: no worries; didn't sound like bashing)

OK, examples. Oh, I don't know, let me think a minute ... Odysseus? Definitely heroic and definitely not your standard bruiser. Aeneus falls in the same vein. Aristophanes gave us a whole range of decidedly male characters. Don Quixote. More recent, you say? How about Dr Who? I would argue the case for Indiana Jones, but if you're not buying, then at least his father.

Oh, never mind. Yes there is sexism in literature. But it does not therefore follow there is *only* sexism in literature. The crucial question here is whether literature--and I guess we should say fantasy literature--is infected by negative cultural values in a way that somehow needs a cure. That something is wrong here and must be fixed.

I don't have a strong opinion on it. It would be exhausting to me to attempt an inventory of all fantasy works, then learn enough literary criticism to be able to read all that and come to some conclusion about the extent and nature of bad male stereotypes. Sure they are there. It's easy to name some. But "some" plus "some others" does not necessarily equal "all" or even "most". So I'm just going to write stories that make sense to me and let my readers decide whether I have sinned. At this point I'll just be delighted to get published.

 

[Jabrosky]

While we're on the subject of favorite male heroic archetypes, I have a soft spot for the "great white hunter" classically exemplified by Allan Quartermain from King Solomon's Mines. They combine the erudition of British gentlemen with the survival skills and courage you expect from huntsmen. It's a shame most of them come from older fiction that's saturated with obsolete racial attitudes.

Come to think of it, someone ought to revive the old safari genre of literature. I'm a sucker for exotic jungle adventures, especially those with savage wildlife.

 

[Caged Maiden]

okay... a little bit of confession then. Guys talk to me, A LOT. I'm not sure whether they talk to each other about not feeling "manly" but I'll tell you what... they've talked to me. I don't want to get too personal, but I once had a guy reject me, ready to go as I was... and I'm not bad looking and at the time had a line of suitors around the corner... but he expressed his fear he wouldn't measure up to my standards (in more than in inches way) and didn't even want to take his clothes off. We had a lovely cuddle that night and a wonderful friendly chat. I thought it was kinda one of the bravest things I've ever seen, because I can be sort of... intimidating sometimes. But I was also touched deep, by his intuition and self-assurance. For someone who was saying with his mouth that he wasn't confident... the very fact that he told me the truth... was pretty impressive. I got a new found respect for said friend and we are still friends so many years later.

It's happened other times, too. I get to hear all kinds of dirty man secrets, being a girl. Once boys realize they cant get me in the sack, I get elevated to a sort of non-threatening wing man status. I hang around them and laugh at their jokes and generally have a great time with a friend, and if another girl comes by and finds them interesting, I quietly fade away. Usually, no other girls show interest and I get to just chat all personal with a guy friend all night, though and it's pretty amazing the things I hear. Now, I've been told I'm easy to talk to... but seriously, is this experience unique? I hear about their relationships with fathers, their relationships with their sons, their wives, or exes, the girl they're ogling and can't get over... whatever. All of it. More than I want. And I'm not talking about five or six good friends... virtual strangers do this same thing. Sort of a lot. It might not be a discussion of "manliness" in the sense of "I feel most like a man when..." but just by having other conversations, about relationships, family, hobbies, dreams, etc. You can infer a lot.

Okay, I'm just positive we know more about what makes men tick than we think, but sometimes you have to scratch the surface. I base my male characters off things I've witnessed and while I tend to lean toward certain personality types for my novels, it's always easier to sort of take real people and mix actual things they say into my stories.

ahahaha @ jupiter. it was a "lot" of jerks, but I couldn't edit my typo after five minutes. I kinda hate that no-editing thing. It was better when you didn't have to read so closely the first time. Sorry, spell-check didn't catch it because it made a word.

 

[Mindfire]

Residing in the southern U.S. I can't escape it, but I still tend to regard them as I would a different species. More than once when I go somewhere my car is the only sedan in the parking lot. All other vehicles are trucks.

Don't sweat it, Guy. Trucks are for rednecks, dudebros, and workmen. Only one of those is a respectable category.

 

[Telcontar]

...Trucks are for rednecks, dudebros, and workmen. Only one of those is a respectable category.

Though a person can easily belong to more than one - and even all three - of these at a time. I have a few cousins like that.

Reading through this thread (which has been interesting, kudos to all participants), I'm fascinated to see how often the concept of "male traits" and "female traits" comes up and is then questioned. When it is called into question, however, it is generally along the form of saying that a woman can exhibit male traits, or that a man can exhibit female traits.

Forgive me if I've missed it, but I'm not sure I've seen someone say yet that the problem lies with attempting to group any of these traits under a gender in the first place.

An exercise I've been putting myself through lately is planning stories with characters without deciding the character genders beforehand. I'll then go through and randomly assign a gender to each one (male, female, sometimes transgendered) and see how that affects my reception of the plot so far. It exposes a lot of my assumptions about what growing up male or female means.

I think that there are likely to be certain genetic predispositions that affect men and women in different ways. Tendencies towards nurturing, towards aggression and violence, etc etc. If true, then no doubt these are what helped give rise to gender roles in the first place - but in an advanced society where we allow that every individual should be allowed to express whatever traits come most naturally to them, I'd hope we'll eventually do away with gendered traits entirely... or at least trend towards that ideal.

 

[Steerpike]

As an aside, I know a lesbian who drives a truck and fits into none of Mindfire's categories

Forgive me if I've missed it, but I'm not sure I've seen someone say yet that the problem lies with attempting to group any of these traits under a gender in the first place.

Yeah, I think this is a big part of the problem with discussions of gender. Of course, people are speaking, I assume, of 'traditional' male and female roles as they've existed historically under a patriarchal system. But it seems to me that one has conceded too much ground too early if one uses that as a starting place.

 

[Devor]

I've seen grown straight men have these conversations. Things can get real, man. There's a lot of guys out there who really resent being told not to cry. On the flip side of that gender conversation, I don't even want to think about what many guys think of women. It's scary.


((edit to add: ))

I think that there are likely to be certain genetic predispositions that affect men and women in different ways. Tendencies towards nurturing, towards aggression and violence, etc etc. If true, then no doubt these are what helped give rise to gender roles in the first place - but in an advanced society where we allow that every individual should be allowed to express whatever traits come most naturally to them, I'd hope we'll eventually do away with gendered traits entirely... or at least trend towards that ideal.

In psychology, they look at the "Big Five" personality traits and how they differ between men and women. In the developed world, the gender difference is bigger, not smaller, and the difference is almost entirely because men are behaving more "manly." That is, our testosterone levels are higher here in the US/Europe than elsewhere.

I don't know entirely what to make of that, but it doesn't suggest that these differences are going to go away as we get even more developed. If anything, I would think modern society gives us more room to specialize our behaviors and let natural gender differences grow along with other natural differences that people have.

 

[Caged Maiden]

That's true... men who are more likely to "talk" to me about their problems are probably less like my dad and more like my husband. My whole life I respected my dad. Never saw him cry, never saw him meet a situation he couldn't handle with silent, calm perseverence, etc. He's not an emotional person. However, fr a very brief time, right after my mom left him (I was 20), I became his friend and got to experience his emotional side. It was very brief, but it left a lasting impression. I think men tend to be more rational than women, as a general rule, especially in my parents' generation (they're 54 now). Now, young men and women tend to be more open about feelings than they were a half century ago, but is that because they've changed, or is it society tht now says it's okay for women to be callous and for men to be more sensitive?

I have three boys and a girl, and my girl is the roughest one. She taught my boys to be rough and dirty, and didn't learn it from them. I think as young people, we are what we are, and then the world molds us from there. It's true there are gender differences that cannot really be simple examples of "societal influence". One example being that little girls have better fine motor skills than boys, and another that young girls play in groups and little boys play all in the same room, but each driving his own truck around. All children might not fit neatly into those examples, but most do.

I think my husband is the best father I've ever witnessed. He loves kids. In fact, before we had our own, he often stopped to talk to other people's kids and got more than one odd stare. I had to explain to him that Americans aren't really sure what to do with a man who just likes to play with kids... that they tend to think him a weirdo or someone who has an inappropriate attraction to children. However... I think in history, before molestation was the obvious conclusion people would jump to, it wasn't necessarily odd for a man to enjoy talking to children and being not only a teacher, but mentor. Children went to foster in their preteen years and often lived with uncles and aunts or wealthier relatives. Children really do need a village and men were a part of the human history village.

I think in the past, men were proud of their name and the honor they upheld for the sake of their family name. That doesn't really exist now in America, but I believe a part of it lingers in a personal code of honor many men feel.

My grandfather was a brick-layer. In the winter, when he was out of work, he'd make my grandmother get in the mail so the neighbors wouldn't see him home in the middle of the day. That was a big deal to him... that he was a seasonal worker and he felt ashamed. Why though? Would any man feel the same today? He made enough money in the summer months to feed and clothe his family all year. He even had a nice house and wasn't at all poor. I know men who are teachers and they LOVE their summer vacations. So... why was it such a big deal to my grandfather? I don't know.

I think a lot of what makes any person, male or female, feel good about their self, is in part due to their upbringing. My parents have a set of ethics they've passed on, and it was partly shaped by their parents. I am raising my children another way, but in part, based upon the values my parents gave to me.

 

[buyjupiter]

okay... a little bit of confession then. Guys talk to me, A LOT. I'm not sure whether they talk to each other about not feeling "manly" but I'll tell you what... they've talked to me....

It's happened other times, too. I get to hear all kinds of dirty man secrets, being a girl. Once boys realize they cant get me in the sack, I get elevated to a sort of non-threatening wing man status...

ahahaha @ jupiter. it was a "lot" of jerks, but I couldn't edit my typo after five minutes. I kinda hate that no-editing thing. It was better when you didn't have to read so closely the first time. Sorry, spell-check didn't catch it because it made a word.

Yeah, I have had more platonic guy friends than gal friends and I've heard a lot of interesting things over the years. I also frequently get the "I've just been out drinking with the buddies and now I'm drunk and I miss my ex and will you listen to me for a few minutes" phone calls at 3AM. There have been tears before.

I've heard more man secrets in relationships than I do with my platonic friends. Which kinda surprised me because I figured that guys would toe the party line, especially when I've heard them make comments to their friends about certain things like bisexual women being super amazing...and then behind closed doors there's insecurity because well, I've dated both men and women and they're afraid I won't be happy with just them. (That was an interesting conversation.)

I know what you meant, I just got the image in my head and giggled before I figured out the word you did mean. And I appreciate the giggle.

@Devor, I've heard from a lot of guys that they hate crying, because they see it as shameful and/or they've been shamed for it (chicken and egg thing here)...and are surprised when I don't try to shame them. I see crying as normal and a healthy release valve, better than punching holes in walls, and I would rather see everybody be a little more emotional than try to contain everything until they explode.

This is a big side note, but yesterday I read a list of tips for Japanese tourists coming to America for the first time. Reading about my own cultural beliefs (American) and the reasoning for why we do some of the etiquette things that we do gave me a really interesting glimpse into our own culture. And for the record, I had no idea that putting my hand over my mouth when I laugh is considered rude, as if I were hiding something. I do it because I saw my mom do it who saw everybody in Japan do it when she was a little kid.

 

[Caged Maiden]

One more example of manliness I'd like to share...

When I was ten, my father and uncle took me and my brother through the woods they grew up in, right by my grandma's house. (I should say that my dad was the man of the house at sixteen, when his father died young of stomach cancer, leaving behind a wife (36) with four children (16, 15, 12, and 8).)

We hiked all day and had a lovely exploration, but we got stuck on the wrong side of a huge wall of brambles, no way around them. Eventually, my dad decided we had to cut across. He waded into the bushes, propping them up with his back, and held them up for us to go through. Now that I'm reading Prince of Thorns, I smile when I think of Jorg in the thorn bush, because I recall the blood showing through my dad's sleeves as he bore the brunt of the prickers to clear the way for his children. We didn't have a scratch on us as we exited, but he never complained. It was a good day.

That single memory left such an impression with me, I wrote it into a novel. In one book, a man (Aethan) who lost his family in a tragic accident, marries a young woman (Alayna) who is raising her son/ brother (Ian), the product of incest rape. He marries her, proclaiming her son his heir until she gives him another son, at which time, the step-son (Ian) will be given a title, but the blood son would be the inheriting son. Okay... so cut to the future... the daughter of those people Ayleth, half-sister to Ian), meets her family (she's seventeen). She decided she hates Aethan and Alayna for giving her away as a baby, for a friend to raise. Ian pulls her aside and tells her the bramble story, saying, "You don't know him as a father, and I'm sorry for that, but I do. He's the finest man I've eve met and he was more of a father to me than I ever could have asked for. Give him a chance."

I am lucky to have friends who gladly step in as surrogate fathers for me. I have one friend who has two grown kids, and when I brought my son to archery practice, I lost patience with him in a short amount of time. My friend took my son's hand and said, "May I teach him?" and I was extremely happy to allow someone else to be the mentor, rather than me. Another friend of mine has an infant of his own, but is raising his wife's two children from her first marriage. When I let my kids take the day off school to go to their house for chicken butchering, my two older sons totally followed him around and did whatever he was doing (plucking the dead hens, holding them before the heading, whatever). I mean, my boys love my female friends too, but I think they were just so excited that a grown man wanted to hang out with them... they loved being his little mini-me for the afternoon.

I guess... it is really important that children have both male and female role models around, not to learn how to "be a man", but more to know that men care too and that they can share equally wonderful life experiences and lessons with young people. For me (growing up with a stay at home mom and a dad who worked hard), I tended to hang out with my mom more (and give her a little more hell) but I took every ounce of dad-time I got because it was in shorter supply. Now, I see the same dynamic with my own family. I do all the day-to-day stuff and my husband gets to be the guy who takes them bowling on Saturdays.

I want my children to look back and know that we equally cared, even though I did 90% of the parenting. That's the price a man pays if he wants to work hard to support his family. But... the trade-off is that we get to do things like I did with my dad, when I was young. It was my dad who taught me to bait a hook but it was my mom who taught me how to gut fish. My mom taught me to pick blackberries and make them into pie... and my dad sacrificed his blood when the blackberry bush was in our way.

 

[Mindfire]

As an aside, I know a lesbian who drives a truck and fits into none of Mindfire's categories

There will always be outliers.

 

[Gurkhal]

Very interesting thread. Keep it coming people.

 

[Jabrosky]

This might derail the thread, but I didn't think the question I wanted to pose was worth its own new thread.

A lot of the stories I think up have one leading man and woman, but this time I am pondering whether I should give my male lead two simultaneous female love interests. The first woman is a tribal warrior/huntress who escorts him to a civilization hidden deep in the jungle, whereas the second is the matriarchal ruler of that civilization. He ends up falling for both or at least sleeping with both, and what's more, this bothers neither lady since both come from cultures that accept polygamy. I anticipate that in the end he officially marries the queen while the warrior returns to her tribe some distance away. The warrior isn't really the family-oriented type anyway.

Would this kind of bigamous relationship bother anyone here?

 

[Philip Overby]

Hmm...that's hard to say. I thought you meant a love triangle at first. If that was the case, then it's kind of a common arc in stories. A character falls in love with two different women, has to make a choice, etc. Not sure how this kind of relationship would be viewed by most of the public.

 

[Jabrosky]

Hmm...that's hard to say. I thought you meant a love triangle at first. If that was the case, then it's kind of a common arc in stories. A character falls in love with two different women, has to make a choice, etc. Not sure how this kind of relationship would be viewed by most of the public.

I'm still trying to iron out my plot at the moment, so it won't be a huge loss for me to discard this angle.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

In my view it's hard for any man to truly understand a woman and vice versa. Which is why we end up with these stereotypical male and female characters. And it's why I write men rather than woman as my MC's. It's simply what I know as a man. But to give a recent example of how this lack of understanding can shock, I'd look to my editors comments on one of my books. Actually my last one.

In it I wrote about a man going through a series of bizarre changes as his body mutates due to mad science going wrong (when exactly does it ever go right??) And one of those changes early on was when he lost his sexual drive - not his equipment so to speak, just his desire. For me writing this as a man who had once been a younger, fitter university student, I tried to write this for the true horror / nightmare it is. There are of course men who do go through this for one reason or another, and in time they learn to adjust to life as a sexless being more or less. Just as people learn to live with missing limbs or blindness etc. But no guy in his sexual prime could ever see such a loss as anything other than a complete disaster. A complete loss of who a man is.

My editor who also happens to be my sister and therefore a woman, had enormous problems understanding why I was making this into such a big thing. To her the loss was only about a loss of desire, and therefore not the end of the world. And no matter how I tried to explain it to her, she couldn't really seem to grasp that for a man at least, his sexual drive is about far more than just desire. It's almost the foundation of male identity. Whether men are successful with women or not, alpha male or geek, probably even gay or straight, that sexual drive is fundamental to concepts of self worth, self esteem, identity, pride, status perceived and / or real, and in short masculinity. And I being a man kept wondering how she could not understand that.

On a sort of related note, a friend of mine was once long ago abused by a woman (actually several) because he would not continue a relationship with a woman who had a child. As he said to her he would not be a father to another man's child. Naturally enough I suppose this provoked a strong reaction from the woman (who it must be pointed out had not actually told him she had a child until after the relationship had progressed to a certain level) and abused him for a long time to follow. Again this is simply an extension of the different understandings of the world between men and women.

Partly it's a personal insecurity issue. After all there is no woman in the world who can ever have a baby and then start wondering -is this baby mine? But men do worry about that and I don't think woman always understand how powerful a drive it is. Partly it's about masculinity and possessiveness. And again it may be ugly but men, perhaps not all but many, do divide up the world, including people etc, into two groups. What is theirs and what isn't. And for many men the child of another man will always be just that and never theirs. Partly it's about a whole lot of other things like freedom and not being tied down by a family. Some men can get past this and become great step fathers. Some men can't. And tragically some men try and fail which is unfortunately reflected in the statistics of child abuse etc. A think from memory a child raised in a home where a non biological male parent is present is seven or eight times more likely to be abused compared to a child raised in a home where the biological father is present.

To ad to this, and I have absolutely no stats for this, I'm certain that the number of women without partners who can't have children and go to lengths like trying to adopt, vastly outweighs the number of partnerless men who try to adopt. For many woman the need / desire to be a parent outweighs the need for the child to be theirs. For men not so much.

I think the take home message from all of this is that men have an instinctual almost primal need to "know" that a child is theirs in order to be able to act as a parent. Some men can get around this "knowing" through a sort of emotional bonding which can overcome the actual knowledge that the child is not theirs. And as a corollary many woman do not seem to understand how powerful that need is simply because they do not share it to the same extent.

In the end I think men and women are actually quite different in their emotional / psychological make up and it's very hard for either to get in the head space of the other.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[skip.knox]

Today I was walking my dogs when I saw a dead bird (this is on topic, I promise). It was a blackbird, young, having died nearly two weeks ago. I know this because of the memorial stone next to it.

The stone, a little smaller than the palm of my hand, appeared only in the last couple of days; I was on my regular route and I had not noticed it previously. And I would have, for it was propped carefully up next to the body, painted a light blue, with the message hand-lettered. This is what the message said:

Blackbird chick
died Feb 12
2014

A couple of things struck me about this little memorial. One was that it must have been made by a young girl. Both adjective and noun are relevant, for it strikes me unlikely that a boy should have made this, or that an adult of either gender would have done so. In fact, I'd go so far as to guess she is somewhere between the ages of nine and seventeen. I do not preclude the possibility of the stone having been placed there by an elderly gentleman, but that ain't the way to bet.

The other thing that struck me was the thoughtfulness behind the stone--not the "oh poor dead birdy" thoughtfulness but the exactitude. Not only the caring but the carefulness. This girl (let us have her be one for now) did not disturb the bird but left it exactly as it lay, shoved up against a cyclone fence, amid last autumn's leaves. She could have said "dead bird" but she identified it as a blackbird chick. She wrote the date, which means she had observed it some time earlier, had remembered the date, and had thought it important to record it. She took the time to find an appropriate stone on which to compose her message, and she decorated it rather than leave it plain, but she forebore to paint hearts or smiley faces or angels. Just the facts. There is a precision of mind and observation here. I took a picture; my way of commemorating.

How does this relate to our thread? Not to manliness, no, but to the larger theme. Most of the talk about gender differences focuses on negative aspects or on arguing whether differences are societal or natural. I've rather given up on that sort of discussion. To me, this little tableau demonstrates not only there are differences between gender (and differences between age, a topic on which few disagree), but that the differences are *interesting*. As a writer, I say the more differences the better. They give me space to explore. But even as I make sweeping generalizations (i.e., this had to have been done by a young girl), I see the individual in her careful precision. Not merely young, not merely a girl, but a particular, specific girl. The politician, the polemicist, they stop at the generalization and never tire of their arguing. The writer looks at the individual and never tires of the finding.

 

[Jabrosky]

In my view it's hard for any man to truly understand a woman and vice versa. Which is why we end up with these stereotypical male and female characters. And it's why I write men rather than woman as my MC's. It's simply what I know as a man.

The vast majority of my own protagonists are either white men or black women. I write white guys because I am a white guy myself, and I write black ladies because they're whom I feel most attracted to (don't ask why). I have to conclude that it's easier for me to write white male heroes than black female ones. This is in part because I can draw upon my own experiences as a white male, but I also feel there's a lot more political tightrope-walking when it comes to writing women or non-European characters.

Actually, I lay part of that tightrope out myself. I want my black female heroines to be attractive both inside and out, because I don't like the racial and gendered stereotypes traditionally used to devalue them. But that may be a digression for another topic.

That said, all my stories with white male heroes still have black leading ladies whom they pair up with. What can I say, I'm starved for female company.

 

[Devor]

And no matter how I tried to explain it to her, she couldn't really seem to grasp that for a man at least, his sexual drive is about far more than just desire. It's almost the foundation of male identity.

As a man I have just . . . so many problems with this statement. I don't even know where to begin.

It's true that the male sex drive tends to work a little differently than the female sex drive. It's also fair enough that some guy in college who's made sex into a big deal in his life might see losing it as a nightmare. But your sex drive as the foundation of the male identity? That sounds sad.

I think the take home message from all of this is that men have an instinctual almost primal need to "know" that a child is theirs in order to be able to act as a parent.

I don't think so at all. There are many, many men who want to adopt children, and stories about wicked stepmothers are also pretty common. Even in your example it sounds like there were a great many of other issues involved, like how the child was kept a secret, and the pattern of abuse which followed after the relationship almost certainly stemmed from characteristics which would have been present during the relationship. I don't see how you jump from that example to some kind of an intrinsic need. It seems like a big leap.