Males, being male and the aspects of it, good and bad

Pay for club entry? Pfft. I always go on gentleman's night.

 

When I take a break from being a notorious Muslim rapist, I like to think of myself as a pretty decent person as far as treating all sexes/genders/orientations as Freestanding Human Beings (TM). But this isn't about me; no, it's about Manly Men.

...

I think the difficulty of this thread and any thread that deals with gender identity, sex roles and similar is that it basically boils down to the following: The world is too big, too diverse for [____] to talk about being [____] without causing a hissy fit.

The other issue is that we've got a bunch of guys sitting around defining what it is to be a man without having actually done anything that fits into the shit stereotype. Heh, it's hard to thump your chest as an assistant manager at a fucking Staples, people.

In the confines of middle class white American males? Yeah, I know what it is to be a man. I was a motherfucking paratrooper and the rest of you spineless fucks can take your soft palms and high brow careers and shove them up your skinny jean'd asses.

*flips desk, sets the trash can on fire, tears a phone book in half, crushes a cheap American beer can on his forehead, fixes the A/C vent fan in a Toyota Corolla without removing the dash, does 25 hang pullups, palms your woman's crotch on the way out*

Stuff like that.

If you'll excuse me, I've got do the laundry and make dinner for my woman.

...

If you're afraid to talk about "traditional male roles" and the related skill set and yet have none of that expertise, maybe you should reevaluate things. Or date a woman that can bench 225 and knows how to change a tire.

...

There isn't anybody I'd want to fuck on TFP so that basically leaves everybody here in two categories:

1. People I want to drink with
2. Assholes that should get bent

 

That's pretty much what happened to my career without your help.

I have no clue what it means "to be a man". I'm still working on "don't be an asshole" (unsuccessfully, at times).

 

*notices you in the kitchen* Take your goddamn shoes off. And I better not catch you voting in there.

...

I can't hear you over the sound of how many brown people I oppressed while I was busy being a capitalist baby-killer.

I'd argue that--based on your blog posts--you're more of a man than most of the dipshits here, myself included.

 

You should write Hallmark cards. Your post is the exact point I was trying to make about how none of this bullshit adds up to a gender identity. Every single Man Thing (TM) I've done has been counteracted by a Pussy Moment (TM).

...

Masculine Identity in the Service Class

Stop Living for the Approval of Women

 

I read the article up there about needing the approval of women and through the entire thing I am thinking, 'yes, exactly, that is what I no longer want.' Yet, I am a woman and am applying it to men. I don't want to feel like I need anyone's approval to say whatever I need to say, either. So, I would just like to reiterate that nothing I ever posted on my 'females' thread was meant to be a global indictment of men. But after reading that article I can see how these kinds of observations can get skewed and lose their original meaning. Particularly, if you're a member of one group or another who doesn't want to have attributes pinned on your person that you feel (happily) liberated from. I would like to think that everyone here can understand that very simple premise and, you know, give each other the benefit of the doubt. I think the number of people here who have true gender hatred are very few. If we can share ideas like these, realize that what we are saying is 'hey, this is my experience and it really doesn't have anything to do with you directly,' respect the fact that their experience is valid and not get so bent out of shape about it we might be able to get some cross-gender conversations going on here. Or, conversely, we can continue reacting, denying each other our experience of things and getting all huffy and talking past each other. That's what I have to say about that.

 

Yeah? Well I'm a goddamn state trooper. Yesterday I covered a crash where the guy wrecked and left the scene to hooters to get beer to cover up his dui. So I hit him with hit and run, enough points to take his license twice over. Then while back at the scene three shots were fired less than a hundred yards away at a shitty apartment complex. So the other trooper and I hustled over and called the deputies. Spent time looking for that. End of the night was covering a crash in an icy bridge. Rolled his suv twice, dog ran away. Covered the crash, helped recover his dog that only approached me (dog didn't want to be sweet talked over, it wanted me to tell it to get in the damn car! It needed someone to tell it what to do.) And then went to the hospital and watched them use sixteen staples to secure his scalp above his ear. Got home at 0430 with 1.5 hours of overtime.
What I love about my job is taking responsibility. Making decisions. Learning to be in charge. Finally feeling like a man. And I talk to everybody. Suspects, victims, other law enforcement officers. But when its mu scene, its ultimately my decision.
And I don't mean a power trip. Every decision I make can be scrutinized under the state agency I work for and also the entire legal justice system, including whether I might have violated someones constitutional rights. Ao having that responsibility is huge, but I finally feel like I'm doing something with my life. Reference my post footer.

 

I want to be careful in my post. Will do it.

 

I like being a guy. I also like being true to my ideals, thoughts and feelings. Personally, I don't think I'm all too manly, whereas others would describe me as a stereotypical macho dumbass male. Though I suspect my Middle Eastern-ness is skewing my image and has been for a long time.

Since my early teens I was fortunate enough to have been in the "tall" category, with wide shoulders and fairly built legs, so I didn't have to deal with being bullied. For most of my life, I simply wanted to be "nice" to people and I have a tremendously large supply of being genuinely interested in getting to know others. Often my level of interest is not taken seriously, for which I blame society teaching its members to be apathetic towards others, and to consider "unwarranted" and sudden interest in their person as suspicious.

I was never the anti-social type and always had a knack for making acquaintances/friends, but my being a man has often been a stumbling block in my ability to attain what I sought most for a long time: Deeply loyal and trusting relationships. Fortunately, I'm a bit of a numbnut so people rejecting my emotional approaches never hindered me from putting myself out there again until I found people I clicked with.

It's a shame that many guys have been brainwashed by society to completely repress their wants and feelings, and I had to witness it over and over again with (whom I then considered) some of my very best friends from childhood. I can fully understand why they turned out that way. As children, they are told to "act like a man" and to stop communicating their concerns and wants. As teenage guys, if they make the mistake to open up and share things that truly bother them, they will almost always be bullied into mental submission by their equals and their peers (both male and female).

There are many areas that I believe are in urgent need for reform (especially in schools) so that boys can naturally grow to become their own men in a society that frowns upon boyish behavior and treats them as defective girls, without being emotional cripples who can only communicate in grunts and bizeps contractions, or have to turn into emos to find an acceptable emotional outlet.

Regardless, I don't consider myself anywhere near a typical male. This is rooted in the fact that as a child I had the disadvantage of not having my parents (especially my father) around much at all because they very often had to work from early morning until very late into the night to keep the business afloat and stable, and what little attention they could spare usually went to my sister, so more often than not I ended up without a male role model. Most of the things I learned as a boy, I learned from watching other boys and their families in school or when over at their places. There were some awkward times when 7/8/9-year old Remixer was attached to other people's parents more than he should've been.

Also, because I didn't build much of a connection with my parents in childhood, I am still on awkward terms with my parents. In recent years I have connected a lot with my father and he has been a great mentor, while my relationship with my mother is pretty frosty (there are some fundamental issues with her behavior and the way she treats other people that we haven't been able to reconcile).

All of this made me feel emotionally inadequate throughout most of my childhood and subsequent puberty, but I think I reached a good place a couple years ago and am enjoying being my dumbass self.

Society affects my behavior very little, and only in matters where I have to take political ramifications of certain actions/statements into account.

Generally, I have no thoughts on what "being a man" entails. I think there are many ways to be one. I consider myself a man, nothing more.

 

I don't really care what it means to "be a man". I suppose there was a time where I struggled with the question, but it just became tiresome.

I just try to do the right thing and not worry about meeting other people's expectations.

That said, I don't live in a vacuum and I do, like everyone else, react and see myself in relation to others (and Others).

Nothing is as simple as we would like it to be...

 

I guess I like being a man. I don't really have anything else to compare it to, since I've always been a man....

I'm sure there are societal benefits I have reaped from being a dude, but I'm not sure I've been aware of them. They've probably also been eroded a bit by being overweight, geeky, introverted, and Jewish.

I like my penis pretty well. Wish it were a bit bigger. But pretty happy having it. I use it a lot, and I am very satisfied with its performance. Never really wanted anything else in its place, though most probably if I were a woman, I'd like my vagina and clitoris just as much....

Definitely like girls a lot, but that's not really a man thing, since I could just as easily have been a woman and been a lesbian. Kinda went in that direction anyway, what with social activism, feminism, listening to Indigo Girls and Sarah McLachlan and so on....

Despite being a feminist, I do tend to relate strongly to elements of chivalry, being a gentleman, living by a code of honor, etc.

Nonetheless, I don't have much patience for machismo and lots of mainstream "male" identity crap, and in my opinion, a staggeringly high proportion of other dudes are dicks.

I dunno. In a weird way, I just don't think of "manliness" or "masculinity" as core foundations of my identity. I don't think of "femaleness" or "femininity" as part of my identity in any major way, either. I just tend to think of myself in relation to different definitions-- not of gender or sex identity, I am definitely a male masculine man, and am contented as such. But rather that before anything else, I might think of myself as a Jew, an American, a human being, a scholar, an artist, a teacher, etc.

That said, I definitely have clear ideas about being a man, and as a comparatively new father (Little Levite is turning one year old tomorrow!), I do think a lot about what I want to pass on to my son about being a man. A lot of it is Jewish-oriented, but what isn't is mostly about responsibility, self-integrity, being true to yourself, being self-reliant but not afraid to ask for help when needed and take it when it's offered, being respectful to all and especially to women, being a good listener, being compassionate to others, and seeking to make the world a more just place.

 

Power aims to normalize the things that perpetuate itself. Since they're so normal, it's harder to notice them. That's why we're having so much trouble stating what our masculinity is about. How many of the positives we are describing are aspects of what makes a good human? What's left after that?

 

I am not convinced these two positions are mutually exclusive. While there has been a trend in feminism to get upset if a man holds the door open for a woman, etc. I think that is more of a reaction to breaking down cultural norms and a resentment of traditional roles. I think feminism has room for a multitude of points of view on this and many other subjects (i.e. feminism isn't the monolith and it has and will continue to evolve).

 

You know, I have yet to ever meet this feminist who gets upset at having a door held open for them. I suppose they exist, but I can't help but think they're part outlier and part myth carried out of the 1970s heyday of feminism - when feminists were trying to break all of the old rules. I've never had a problem with someone being kind to me.