Why isn’t having a penis good enough to prove that you’re a man?
Because simply having a penis won’t get a woman to love you.
Therefore, some men do what they think that women would probably like, and that usually involves shoehorning oneself into a caricature of a gender role: bluff and braggadocio, etc.
Let’s ask the corresponding question: why do women sometimes act artificially around men, act airheaded or coquettish or helpless when she is none of these things? I think we all know the answer’s the same. Because women think they should, to impress and/or catch a man.
Dude, I have 4 penii, and that doesn’t count the detachable ones I keep in my closet. Hm, do I want to be “AAAAH, an elephant escaped from the zoo” tonight, or save that for the weekend?
Trupa, I stayed at home for over a decade, (when the kids were little) and I’ll have to agree with your assessment of how men are treated if they stay at home. As a woman I can understand a little of the reasons why.
Conversation-A little hard to ask TMI questions of other mothers in front a guy.
Complaints-Again, hard to bitch about stupid men in front of one.
Husbands jealousy-You’re going out to eat with another guy? (Even though it’s the Playplace at McDonald’s)
Sexual tension-all those moms thought you were really hot, and were afraid of their uncontrollable desires.
You are either looked at like you have three heads, are going to molest kids, or are a blabbering idiot. Women in general (big brush) are very uncomfortable. I knew a couple of guys that stayed home, coached with one, they did a great job. It always amused me though, because they looked on their day like a military operation.
You do have it easier though, there are informal networks of men that stay home, that helps a lot.
Funnily enough I was discussing this with my bitch last night while she was scrubbing the kitchen floor,but I was a bit too tired to talk about it in depth because before coming home I’d drunk 18 pints of lager,had a triple mega hot curry,beaten five ex professional boxers up and shagged eight women,all of whom I might add were ex beauty queens.
But to be sensible for a moment,I was brought up on a rough council estate in England where reading books meant that you were a pouff and as such easy meat for a beating.
Because of this I became quite adept at being able to defend myself at a very young age and it,along with literacy,is something that has stayed with me even now when I’m old and knackered.
In many ways us blokes are still kids long after the age of twenty one.
First of all, I see a lot of posters here using male and man interchangably. They are not. Having a penis makes you male but it doesn’t make you a man. People say that they like certain things because they are male, but a lot of the things they listed are not typical to all males.
Male refers to the biology. Being a male normally follows from having a penis but not necessarily so, especially if you happen to have ovaries and a penis.
Man refers to gender which is societal expectations of those lumped into a set catagory. Often the people put in the catagory of man are males but not necessarily in all cultures.
Confirmation of masculinity is a very real phenomena in western culture. People are making poor comparisons where they focus on beauty actions of women, but those two behaviors are engaged in for two different reasons.
There are several factors that lead into this. One is more overt male-male competition. Across the animal species both sexes compete but usually male competition is much more noticable and dramatic than female competition. One of my professors was telling me about an experiment he was conducting where they were measuring hormonal levels in a huntergatherer tribe in South America. They gave each participant gum and a cup to fill with saliva. The women of the tribe just filled it independently, but the men gathered in a circle and competed to see who could fill the cup the fastest. I grew up with 6 brothers and lots of male friends so I engage in this behavior a lot myself around my guy friends. I went to an all girl school and rarely observed this type of behavior there.
A lot of this is unconsciously done. Most males don’t go around thinking about ways in which they compete with other males, but if you look at things a lot of guys do (sports is a huge one) are competition related.
Now as why to expressions of masculinity are more important than expressions of feminity is due to the sexism of our society. It is far more okay for a girl to dress in masculine clothing and engage in masculine behavior than it is for a man to engage in feminine behavior in Western culture. Therefore, males are encourage to eschew expressions of feminity in favor of masculinity in most Western subcultures (with notable exceptions that produce interesting effects). Yes, overly masculine behavior of females is frowned up, but tomboys are far more accepted than sissies.
Tribal manhood rites are quite common - have been found over much of the world. Despite being male, you aren’t considered a man unless you pass trials that can be quite severe (e.g. extended torture). If you fail you are ineligible for such things as leadership and especially marriage.
By contrast, women are pretty much automatically eligible for marriage and childbearing based only on being alive and reasonably healthy. There are often elaborate ceremonies, and sometimes such things as ritual mutilation. But these aren’t trials - no one fails.
…except women who can’t, or don’t want to, have children.
Must agree with kimera. Pink, skirts, playing with dolls vs. blue, trousers, playing with cars. That both are available to girls and only one is ‘suitable’ for boys and men speaks volumes about what is considered degrading in North America.
Women want security. Men want sex. It’s that simple. You can solve any gender/sex question by referencing this law of the universe. Men must remain masculine or risk losing sex. Women can shed their feminine ways when not looking for a man, but instantly snap back to womenness when it’s time to go to the club. That’s why women wear pants all day long and belch, etc, but will take 20 minutes putting on makeup to go freeze in a miniskirt while waiting to get into a dance club in January (like last night). Men always look for sex, so we are always masculine. Women only occasionally look for a provider, so they’re only occasionally all femmed up. Naturally, if you’re gay, all bets are off as to your behavior.
No, it would be more sexist, because any way you look at it, it would be more restrictive. The fact that a society might be equally restrictive for both genders (but in different ways) does not make it non-sexist (which is what I think you are driving at). Separate but equal is not possible. The solution is not to restrict women more, it’s to restrict men less.
There are many societies that have rituals for the females when they pass into womanhood. Not all societies have trials for males to go through. In fact, most of the ones I;ve studied have no such trial. Most of them simply have ceremonies or certain markers comparable to what females go through. Of course all societies have gender roles and ways for males and females to differentiate each other. However, western society contains certain elements that are not found in all societies.
Xema, you missed the point. It is sexism against women that causes that behavior in men. Female behavior is typically controlled for an entirely different reason - to control female sexuality. The ideal thing would be for both men and women to have more fluidity in their gender roles.
IntelSoldier, that’s BS. Men want security in their paternity and females want sex. What a gross and incorrect oversimplification of a very complex issue.
I think these commercials tapped into the phenomenon nicely.
I came to it like this. If being a man means not caring what others think (I define womanhood the same way). Then why in hell would I let someone else define my masculinity.
“The day I let another person define, for me, my manhood, is the day I cease to be a man.”
I cry along to certain songs, like kids, will-not-wear-pink (don’t like it on me - I feel naked), poetry’s ok depending…
mentions western culture’s sexism and uses as an example the fact that western culture is less restrictive of women in matters of clothing and behavior.
I agree with you that in this, more restrictive = more sexist, from which I think it follows that less restrictive = less sexist.
