I’ve long found it interesting that “men” consider independence a hallmark of masculinity, and then worry if others think they are un-manly. If a person seems preoccupied with whether something is manly or not - for them or for me… I always wonder why.
“The day I let another person, define for me, my masculinity, is the day I cease to be a man.”
~me
Maybe being accepted as a man - in the eyes of other men and/or of women - is how you earn the right to independence. Just a thought.
I think everything you see there should be informed by the fact that there’s something inherently weird to start with about a family that would swap wives on television.
On a related topic, though, I wonder - and I’m just idly tossing this out there, not making any claims or proposing a testable hypothesis - if there isn’t something to the idea, presented a few times in this thread, that a man’s drive to prove his manliness through machismo might not be inversely related to his natural physical appearance of manliness.
My wife’s best friend, sort of my surrogate sister, is common-law married to a really nice guy I’ll call Tim. Tim and I are about as physically different as two white guys can be; he is about 5’9" and small in stature and doesn’t really have any really masculine physical traits. I’m tall, broad-shouldered, and have a five o’clock shadow about thirty minutes after I shave; I am fighting a lifetime losing battle to be clean shaven.
I have not the slightest bit of interest in “proving” myself as a man. I do what I like when I like it. Tim, on the other hand, is very preoccupied with proving his manliness; he does only manly-type pursuits, and you can tell just in his choice of words and the things he does that he’s conscious of whether or not he’s projecting a masculine image. I must stress that he is not an asshole; it’s just a part of his personality.
And when I go through all the people I know there does seem to be a really strong correlation there - it’s not perfect, but it’s awfully prevalent.
Probably just bullshit, but hey, maybe there’s something to it. Humans, like most mammals, have an instictive eye out for certain dominance, alpha-type indicators. Perhaps men lacking in inherently “alpha” indicators like height, size, deep voices, etc. compensate with behavioural indicators?
Huh, I hope so!
The most important aspect of Manliness is the one most of the overt macho posers forget: You can’t be a Real Man and give a shit what other people think about you.
Real Men may or may not enjoy a nice opera or chardonnay; but they sure as hell aren’t going to be checking over their shoulder and pussyfooting around to keep their friends from finding them listening to “Carmen” or decanting into a fluted glass. If that’s your thing, don’t be ashamed.
Your manly buddies might look at you funny when you tell them you can’t change your oil, and have to pay the pimply high-school brat at Jiffy Lube to do it for you, but you are really going to go down a few notches in their esteem if you get all flustered and embarrassed when you tell the story. As a Real Man, you probably have more important things to worry about anyway – like keeping your lady sexually satisfied several times a day. And that is nothing to be embarrassed about.
Don’t forget: Some of the Manliest Men are those hairy, mustachioed biker guys with sailor hats in the seedy part of town. While it is no big deal to be gay, it is very unmanly to cower in the closet in fear of judgement by your peers. Real Men take responsibility and defend their actions, even if those actions involve orally gratifying other men.
Because you know who frets and worries about society’s opinion of them? Little girls.
Those parts snipped above actually feel like a pretty good description of the pattern of “Manliness” to me.
As a Teenager, I was always insecure around my “cooler” (in my mind at the time) peers, and so I’d tend to avoid conversations of manliness and that sorta thing, or just end up going with the crowd to fit in, because I was constantly thinking about the fact that I never was into sports or cars or kicking ass and taking names. I was probably a huge ‘sissy’ bookworm shy kid. And the Jocks and other guys would tend to set the macho standards, and so it was either emulate them to be popular, or just hopefully avoid the whole mess of things by never getting into a “macho” sorta discussion, where your manliness could be questioned.
But then I went to college, and met more people similar to me, in terms of thinking, taste, and just behavior. I no longer felt pressured to “fit in” or such, and I could just be my dorky bookwormy self. But old habits die hard, whenever I’m around people I’m not comfortable with or unfamiliar with, I always have a thought of “man, that was kind of a dumb thing to say” or just a feeling of holding back.
But then, as I get comfortable, I realize it’s really just an insecurity issue, and general nervousness mixed in with the way that I was raised (at a time and environment where the cooler kids tended to be more ‘Macho’). It wasn’t so much that I kept thinking of being perceived as “unmanly” but more in general of “what if they don’t like me?” sort of insecurities, with my old notions that “Cooler kids tended to be Macho. Therefore, if they don’t like me, I must not be very Macho right now”.
I think as one becomes more comfortable with one’s own self, and comfortable with their own self-perception, then the general worries or insecurities fade in general. And in my experiences as a shy dude, my insecurities manifested into being “macho” as my dipstick* of insecurities. But as I’m loosening up, and worrying less about myself, I now worry less and less about how others tend to perceive me, and just rather focus on what’s the most comfortable way for ME to feel.
*Note: I was very proud of this car metaphor. Jeez, I’m a sissy. (-_-)
But I do like sports, violent movies, and girls, and I realize that by adding that line in, I’m trying to bolster my manly-credibility. I never said I wasn’t a hypocrite. I’m just a self-aware one, slowly learning that only you can define yourself, not others… But I’m tryin’, Ringo. I’m tryin’ real hard
Thanks for delving and sharing, Gentlemen, I’ve enjoyed your replies. 
To try and summarize this in one fabulous sentence:
Men do more activities involving physical exertion and physical risk, and they don’t get all chatty about it, and they don’t use words like fabulous.
But that’s not contingent on what I drive, what I wear (within reason), etc… It is very usually based on how I comport myself, whether I treat people with respect, am reasonably moral, etc…
And that, I’d submit, is true on both sides. I think the male/female line, like some race lines, are artificial line - where many (but not all) rules are actually even. We just point at the “other” side… and fail to look at the lowest common denominators.
If a person thinks I’d be more of a man if I drove an SUV - I’d have a short reply. I just can’t post it in this part of the Dope.
We have a winner. Everybody repeat this: REALITY TV IS NOT REAL LIFE. You’re basically watching Jerry Springer-light. From a mental standpoint these shows are calorie free.
I think I know why “real men” don’t like “sissys”. First of all, by “sissy” I mean a mentally and/or physically weak, whiny, timid man.
Real men do manly, dangerous things. They put out house fires or fight Nazis or brave the Bearing Sea to catch crab for a living. You don’t want some douche aboard who’s going to cave at the slightest hardship. Remember Corporal Upham from Saving Private Ryan? He was a sissy and it got some guys killed.
Now in our less dangerous regular world, the sissy still brings out negative feelings. The sissy can’t be trusted. He doesn’t have your back. He will say whatever he has to whenever he has to in order to avoid the conflict that he fears so much.
That’s my theory anyhow.
Heh, I honestly didn’t mean that as a double entendre. Normally I would have, but I didn’t even think of it that way.
Unfortunately, being an adult male of reasonably good character doesn’t make one a man. Nor do clothes or cars or other materials.
As far as I can figure it out, it’s basically about being a worker. Producing is important - having a certain efficacy in the real world, preferably physical or financial - and being willing to take as much crap as life hands you.
Another part seems to be spending as much time as possible outside your comfort zones.
Funny you should mention that…
I will use whatever divinely scintillating words I fucking feel like.
Another thought: Men cannot simply be and still be men. They must do.
This, in a nutshell, is why so many men’s identities are so wrapped up in their work. The requirement is to achieve in ways that go beyond just reaching out to a few people at a time.
The other requirement is constantly to test yourself - against others’ competitiveness and jealousy and indifference, against your goals, your dreams, your nature. You need to know how to be hard on yourself, and let others be hard on you - as well as when to stop. But you always have to start again.
“A man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing.”
– Joseph Conrad
IIRC, Conrad said this in an essay where he remarked that the greatest achievements of humanity were all brought about by people who worked like hell without ever expecting to understand why, what for, or even to see results.
I suspect Conrad would have stopped short of saying slavery built character, but it’s always seemed to me that at the core of being a man was acknowledging that sometimes you must do what seems pointless and a waste of time - or what is pointless and a waste of time. Call it an existential work ethic.
Since I’m 6’0 tall and look perpetually in need of a shave, I don’t get a lot of crap about not being Manly… until people find out that I really hate The Footy.
Apparently not liking Footy in Australia is the equivalent of being a Communist in the 1950s, and causes one’s Manliness to nose-dive sharply.
Fortunately, I follow enough of the Cricket to be able to talk about it in casual conversation (“What the hell happened in that match with India? How did they let that one go?”), and should anyone still question my Manliness, there are photos on the bookshelf of me sitting on the bonnet of a ute with a rifle in one hand and a dead fox in the other, or a a shooting range in the US with a Tommy Gun… It turns out that Hunting is worth more Man Points that Footy, you see.
Red Foreman:
Steven, you’re 18 now. It’s time to start being a man. And the first rule to being a man is you gotta spend your life doing crap you don’t wanna do.
The worst part about not being a manly man is that you don’t fit in anywhere. RealMen™ are assholes 9 out of 10, and you don’t have the body parts to fit in with the women talk. And, of course, you’re automatically threatening because you have a dick.
Seriously though. I wish “manliness” as a social standard would just go the hell away. It’s outlived whatever evolutionary utility it might have had.