I think a lot of the concepts of the OP are already out of date.
I was watching jordan peterson on the joe rogan show, and they both agreed that, in terms of the dating scene, the guys who get girls are the most “alpha”. And that what young men need to do is be more manly to be more attractive.
The idea that masculinity is attractive is of course not wrong, but it is still some of the worst advice you could possibly give in this context, because trying hard to look manly is how a lot of men end up looking pathetic or obnoxious. And in terms of dating, most men would do far better working on their conversation / communication skills.
My point is just that many men are prisoners to the idea that they must be manly…maybe they got this from TV, or guys like JP? In practice, you can just throw all that stuff out and your life will likely be better for it.
Well, pre-adolescent and adolescent boys today report those attitudes still alive and well, according to a recent survey:
I’m actually kind of baffled that anybody would imagine that these attitudes aren’t still very influential. I mean, you must be spending zero time in the vicinity of teen boys if you can believe that, say, being taunted for “acting like a girl” is merely an out-of-date throwback to 1950.
And it’s not something they get out of thin air: the first really big fight between The Eldest Nephew and 1.SiL (aka The Control Freak) was on account of “boys can’t wear Dora backpacks!”
The look he gave her when they got to kindergarten on the first day and about half the boys wore Dora packs would have melted steel, but she wasn’t the only parent whose son didn’t wear a Dora item or their daughter a Bob the Builder one because of the parent’s prejudices. 3yo is too early to have ingrained sexist notions, but sadly not too early to be subject to them or to start learning them.
It does seem a little wrong to me to say that anger and aggression are the only acceptable emotions for a man to express socially. What seems more correct is going at it from the other direction: there are certain emotional ranges that are not permissible for a man to express (on pain of ridicule or at best being considered strange). This sort of ties in with stoicism.
I can say that I’m sad not to see my family for a long time, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable expressing spending time talking about it or giving details to folks I don’t know well. I can be happy to see a friend, but I can’t yelp with joy and run up and grab him in a hug. I can be somber and deeply apologetic if I run over someone’s dog but I can’t cry with grief or otherwise show exactly how distraught I am.
Anger and aggression are to a large degree tolerated in men, and even expected in some scenarios, but in many situations they would be totally unexpected and undesired modes of behavior.
I would curse you and everything you stand for, but the spider has to be live, and inches away from jumping on my face and killing me via some secret spider powers.
Well shows how much you know, you ignorant little turnip.
I do not, in fact, “yelp like a girl” when startled by a spider. I let out the ancient battlecry of my people, the mighty war-whoop of old transmitted from grandfather to grandson since the dawn of our age, the ancient tribal curse that is only to be uttered when honor has been sullied beyond reparation, weapons must be drawn and cannot be put away before someone, somewhere, has gone splat.
It just so happens that my people are, by and large, pre-teen mice. But we hella fierce, girlfren’.
This is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Are men inherently douchebags, or are they trained to be douchebags by the people (including women) around them?
When a boy is learning how to be a man, he has to figure out the right way to act. He is told that women want to be respected, they enjoy the company of compassionate, interesting men with a good sense of humor. If he goes to the junior prom and sees the handsy dumbass jocks hanging out with the girls and the compassionate, interesting and funny boys are hanging out with other compassionate, interesting and funny boys, he’s bound to think that what he was told might not be accurate.
It’s not that it’s a woman’s job to fix the men, but they have to be on board with the message, and provide more than lip service to it.
I actually agree with this, and it’s why I put “good genes” in quotes in my post. I agree the factors that often sexually select for toxic masculinity in fertile women could well be social as well as genetic, probably some combination of both.
This was my thought for a long time, and I’ve lived my life in accordance, but as I get older and my blood cools I tend to take a longer view and ask myself, “Is it really?” Because the biological imperative is to reproduce, not to be a good guy. And being a douchebag pretty much unquestionably leads to more opportunities to reproduce. The “Nice Guys” are not wrong about that.
Ultimately I taught my daughters not to date douchebags, and my sons not to be douchebags, because I believe the world is changing, or at least should change, but it’s kind of like the question of if it’s better to put your kids in a failing public school and help save it, at the likely cost of their own educational opportunities, or put them in a private school and give your own kids the best chance they have of developing their own potential.
I was back to school shopping in my very diverse neighborhood and there was a hispanic family there with a grade school(maybe 3rd/4th grade) age boy who wanted a certain color of backpack(light green, purple, something like that, I don’t remember exactly) and the woman said “that’s a girl’s color” to the boy while the man was off in another aisle getting something else. So when he came back and said “why don’t you have a backpack yet?” the little boy said “I want that one but mama won’t let me have it.” He said “Why can’t he have that one?” She repeated, “That’s a girls color.” He just kind of sighed and said “Boys can have that color.” Then he picked up the backpack his son wanted and put it in the basket.
This really speaks to the larger question of who is the true gatekeeper of the definition of masculinity. The boys can make whatever choices they want, but ultimately women choose what makes a man successful, in the only way that really matters.
I myself have been single for the past couple years and have dated very little because pretty much every profile talks about wanting “a real man who is an alpha” or somesuch. So my money is where my mouth is on this. I could adopt a persona which would make me more successful in the dating world, but I’m unwilling to and limiting myself to fishing in the end of the pond where I’m hoping to find women who want an equal instead of an alpha.
I think there was a time when this was predominantly the case, but a lot of things have changed since the fifties. Being in education since college, I have seen first hand how children are being raised, and I’m just not seeing that. It really doesn’t apply anymore, although I’m sure there are still individual cases that you could find where that is the case.
Hey, you’re the one who voluntarily joined in on the discussion of boys and gender expectations to challenge (wrongly, as it turned out) what rat avatar was saying about them:
And the answer is, according to this recent survey: Yes, all these “masculinity” stereotypes (such as “Suck It Up”, “Don’t Act Like A Girl”, “Be A Man”, “Boys Don’t Cry”) are still being used to pressure boys of today into conforming to traditional gender roles.
(And why you would even think that a thread titled “The masculinity paradox” would focus specifically on adult men to the exclusion of boys, especially when you’ve already seen and participated in exchanges about boys and masculinity stereotypes within this very thread, defies coherent explanation.)
While I’m glad that you personally are seeing less of these stereotypes, it doesn’t appear that they have yet shrunk down to the level of individual aberration. See the linked survey article back in post #22.
ISTM that this right here is the root of the problem: making “the right way to act” for boys contingent on arbitrary statements about what “women want”.
We need to stop teaching boys that girls/women are essentially vending machines for emotional/sexual gratification and social validation, and that “the right way to act” is about figuring out the right behavioral “coin” to make the vending machine work. When a boy gets told that a certain type of behavior is the right coin to work the vending machine, and it doesn’t produce for him the emotional/sexual gratification and social validation that he was trying to buy with it, he naturally assumes that he was lied to about the right coin or that the vending machine is malfunctioning.
This is intrinsically dehumanizing to women and girls, and not that great for boys and men either. We should instead be teaching boys and girls alike that “the right way to act” is based on fundamental ethical principles rather than on any alleged efficacy in “making” other human beings give you certain things you want. That nobody is automatically entitled to get love or sex or social prestige from any other human being, and that other human beings are not vending machines or puzzles to solve by figuring out behavioral strategies.
:dubious: And when he sees the compassionate, interesting and funny girls who don’t happen to be particularly pretty or popular being ignored by jocks and “compassionate” boys alike? What does he think about that?
Oh wait, I forgot: Girls not getting attention from the opposite sex because of shallow superficial prejudices is completely normal and unremarkable. Boys not getting attention from the opposite sex because of shallow superficial prejudices is a gross injustice and outrage that women as a group need to be held responsible for. :rolleyes:
I’m not sure where some of y’all live, but where I work in rural Oregon the masculinity stereotypes and tropes are quite alive and well.
I have a client who did not tell anyone about his anxiety-caused heart palpitations because he was afraid of seeming weak.
I have a client who didn’t tell anyone about his auditory psychosis for 44 years, same reason.
I have young men, 16-30, who feel paralyzed and crippled because they are neuroatypical, or emotionally sensitive, or not macho enough, or just weird.
These guys are *not *the exceptions, they are the norm.
I have worked with vets for several years now, and you can imagine some of what they might have internalized, but I’m not even talking about them. The good ol’ boys in my office are just trying hard to function in a world that *still *tells them that our acceptable outlets for emotion are anger and physical exertion and not much else.
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To clarify; I am not trying to exclude boys, I am trying to say that simply teaching your own kids does not solve this problem.
Even if your child does not engage in the behavior they still benefit from this power imbalance and lets be honest, their peers will have more influence on them.
While people like to dismiss it as the exception, think of POTUS’s ‘Think Of Your Son’ quote from yesterday.
Yes you should try to raise good children, but we need to take other step to help break down this current culture problem and really I don’t find it acceptable to just wait 20-30 years to do so even if that works perfectly. That is several decades of women being raped and men going to an early grave.
If as a society we can change from Boy George being to pretending to be straight to where we are today this is doable. For my family that took Matthew Shepard being drug to death for those conversations to happen. As Trump rose to power due to primarily leveraging these irrational fears I would ask why are you so positive that we shouldn’t look at what we can do to directly address this problem vs. simply handing the problem off to your children.
I should have specified in stressful situations and negative emotions. But note how the one “negative” example you provided above was stoicism.
That is just another term for the “man up” concept in lots of cases.
[ul]
[li]shutting down when his partner expresses anger or frustration[/li][li]dealing with something sad through sex, drugs etc…[/li][li]lashing out when criticized or confronted and an inability to deal with guilt, shame or embarrassment.[/li][li]not communicating to their partner clearly and calmly when things bother him.[/li][/ul]
That requirement for external stoicism is often a facade. Often times it just blocks simple honest communication that would solve some problems and wouldn’t require any emotional response that is typically labeled as “feminine”.
Wait why are my concepts out of date? Your post just described an example of one of them.
The “alpha male” myth is a perfect illustration of this as the dominance theory it references is based off debunked theories. Dr. Mech himself has retracted his earlier findings.
Men absolutely can show value through acts of leadership or other means without resorting to actions that are at the expense of others, but as this example demonstrates they are often not given that message.
IMHO we don’t need to discard the concept of masculinity but rather switch to dismissing and devaluing actions which are purely at the expense of others and make it clear they are not demonstrating masculinity but immaturity.
But thank you very much anyway and back atcha.