I was intrigued with some of the ideas TC was playing around with in the most recent editorial, all the joking aside. It seems to me that Western culture has been frowning on anything “masculine” for the last 30 years or so, and many of the healthy and constructive expressions of the masculine identity have been turned into something bad and cast aside. I don’t want to blame either Feminism, because it did have a point, or sound like a separatist, but now men are left with fairly undesirable images of themselves in the world around them. Masculine guilt got much, much bigger. This of course is incredibly disatisfying, and so the average guy is left with some very destructive, “Fight Club” alternatives for expressing his disatisfaction with the state of things. Men have been emasculated, women are afraid to embrace femininity for fear of a wrong political or social move. How can anybody be happy with this?
It is not wrong or bad to be a man, or a woman for that matter, no matter what these things mean to you. But just try and say it in public!
Any thoughts on this, people? And TC, a joke from you might be very helpful here.
This is a non-problem. Both the editorial and your post sound like whining to me. Who gives a shit what “society” (whatever that means) thinks a man is or should be? Is your self image determined by what others think? I am an ex-submariner, a weight lifter, own my own business, split my own firewood, take no shit – and do the occasional sink of dishes, love flowers, and I bake one hell of a fresh peach pie. We have two (almost) grown sons and I have done my best to teach them to be whatever the hell they want to be, and screw what other people think. Life is too short to waste time on other peoples opinions.
“How can people be happy with us?”. Why care or even try to give a damn!
It’s not the masculine stereotype that is the problem here. It’s the amount of nimrods, such as yourself, that try to consciously realize you arent treated like every other cheeseburger gulping piece of unsubstantial protoplasm.
My advice to you, before I go off on a tangent is to “GET A LIFE!”.
Hi guys…thanks for the replies, it’s nice to be so popular.
The next time you respond to an op/ed letter, make sure that 1) you read the letter all the way through, 2) you understand it and 3) your quotes are correct. That way, you won’t embarrass yourself and the other readers.
I think it is the abusive antics of mentaly weak males that typify the new stereotypical negative male behavior, and the medias co-optive obsession on this behavior, all the while we have a poverty of clear masculine roll models.
That being said I assert
A: Other Peoples opinions are not my concern, except in context of a mutually beneficial relation.
B: I am not here to make people happy, I am not responsible for the ignorance of others, I can only teach by example.
C: My own definition of a masculinity can be approximately summarised with a statement appearently from Jun Fan referencing himself “To Become the best product available, according to my own terms”
If you don’t like the weak male image… just be damn strong… in all ways.
GregD — I just took a look at the other replies, and yours. I think I am right on target. I went back and re-read the original ed piece to make sure it was what I thought it was. My point, which I may not have made as well as I thought, is that “being a man” is an internal thing, individually decided. If you go back to TC’s article, you will see that all of the supposed horrors being visited upon modern man could be easily avoided by
1 Having balls
2 Using them
The only exception would be the “re-education” of small boys. I would hope that their dads would run interference for them. Other people’s attitudes, opinions, etc have exactly as much power as you wish to give them.
PS I, for one, am sure that you are not a nimrod. Nimrods do not read T-mag. You are probably a doofus. (haha)