What Makes a Man?

The big question.

x

Nighty night, luv. Those Albanian cows won't milk themselves.

The ability to deal with a stroppy Albanian cow is a fairly masculine quality.

Having a sense of humour when the cow kicks you in the nuts is even more masculine but, unfortunately, very hard to find.

x

Erica Ambler wrote:

that’s always been easier for women with their sole custody of the ultimate creative act: that's why it is so cruelly amusing of feminism to reject childbirth, the one thing a woman can do that a man cannot

:roll: 

Most generalizations about the sexes seriously break down at the personal level, which has always been the problem with staking out clear-cut territory for masculinity and femininity. In making these generalizations, we rely on instincts that are as much inherited from our culture as they are inherited from our biology. Which is not to say that there aren't clear biological differences, but that it is somehow difficult to detect exactly what those are, and that what we regard as "masculine" and "feminine" virtues often tend to be, in my mind at least, virtues that are just essentially human, period, and should be pursued regardless of sex.

What does seem to be the case to me is that American culture has precious little positive and edifying to say to men. Male stupidity is emphasized and even celebrated. I'm hardly going to say that American culture treats females much kinder, but some broader shift has almost certainly occurred, given that American higher education now attracts more females than males. It would seem that intellectual pursuit is no longer associated with masculinity; the warrior-poet, an ideal masculine type for many previous cultures, seems so peculiar and odd now.

x

Erica Ambler wrote:

Santa wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

that’s always been easier for women with their sole custody of the ultimate creative act: that's why it is so cruelly amusing of feminism to reject childbirth, the one thing a woman can do that a man cannot

:roll: 

That's contentious?

I think it comes from a very personal place and I think its a rather simplistic view of women's reasons for having or not having children and of biology.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Harmsway wrote:

American higher education now attracts more females than males. It would seem that intellectual pursuit is no longer associated with masculinity; the warrior-poet, an ideal masculine type for many previous cultures, seems so peculiar and odd now.

I think that's down to changes in the education system more than anything, Ryan. In Britain, boys continually  outperformed girls in school and higher education until the exam system was changed from exams to continuous assessment and then from fact- to emotion-based questions. I used to mark political history essays at undergraduate level so saw this at first hand: a typical exam question changed from 'describe the underlying causes of the first Balkan war' to 'Your family is seeking shelter from the war in the Balkans: how do you feel?' Understandably, boys performed rather better at the original question.

Is it that clear cut? I couldn't cope with continuous assessment at all but was quite happy in exams. That shift towards coursework was a very cruel trick, IMO.

x

Ah, I must be butch dykey type then.

And feminist orthodoxy should have no place among right thinking human beings. Very few women, who have children or not, are even aware of (never mind interested in) feminist orthodoxy. I think such a thing has had very little effect on women's feelings about procreation in the real world, whatever the Guardian or Daily Mail may suggest.

Or in other words, what makes a man? Having a penis.

x

Erica Ambler wrote:

I think that's down to changes in the education system more than anything, Ryan. In Britain, boys continually  outperformed girls in school and higher education until the exam system was changed from exams to continuous assessment and then from fact- to emotion-based questions. I used to mark political history essays at undergraduate level so saw this at first hand: a typical exam question changed from 'describe the underlying causes of the first Balkan war' to 'Your family is seeking shelter from the war in the Balkans: how do you feel?' Understandably, boys performed rather better at the original question.

This might be true of the British education system, but it doesn't match my experience of the American education system at all.

Yes, but most of us aren't scientists and have very little to go on so I tend to stick with that. Apart from which, in a probable contradiction to my previous statement, most human beings (men, women and dogs) are far more complicated than their genitals might suggest. On a purely biological basis, having a penis makes you a man but, as Harms points out, it's far too difficult to distill the sum of human experience down to genitalia. Looking at it that way, there's no such thing as men or women, merely collections of cells with varying degrees of softness.

Erica Ambler wrote:

So, for me, despite much societal change, the male strengths are the same as they’ve ever been: - courage, honour, leadership, rationality, and the quest to create and/or achieve.

As irrational types tend to be the more creatively inclined, I believe this virtue's overrated.

As much as I love Santa, Erica and Harms, could some others contribute?

Largo's Shark wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

So, for me, despite much societal change, the male strengths are the same as they’ve ever been: - courage, honour, leadership, rationality, and the quest to create and/or achieve.

As irrational types tend to be the more creatively inclined, I believe this virtue's overrated.

A fully developed man is both rational and emotional. Ambler's definition cites rationality alongside (admirable, but now unfashionable) traits like courage and honour which appear to me to come more from emotional fellow-feeling than from rationality.

Self-sufficiency is key, I think. That might fall below courage and honor, depending on who you are.

I go to school with guys who have never held a job in their whole life and still funnel money from their parents' bank accounts. They're around my age. I don't know how one would function like that.

HJackson wrote:

Largo's Shark wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

So, for me, despite much societal change, the male strengths are the same as they’ve ever been: - courage, honour, leadership, rationality, and the quest to create and/or achieve.

As irrational types tend to be the more creatively inclined, I believe this virtue's overrated.

A fully developed man is both rational and emotional. Ambler's definition cites rationality alongside (admirable, but now unfashionable) traits like courage and honour which appear to me to come more from emotional fellow-feeling than from rationality.

And of course - the quest to create. Was just trying to provoke a response.

What does anyone have to say about 'intellectual' being a dirty word in this country, as opposed to somewhere like France? Or looking at pop music, the rise and fall of working class art school bands and the growth of lad culture?

Control wrote:

I go to school with guys who have never held a job in their whole life and still funnel money from their parents' bank accounts. They're around my age. I don't know how one would function like that.

It was a f*cking nightmare trying to land my first job as a teenager, amid the recession. I dropped out of school at 16 and missed out on vital work experience. I can understand how someone would just give up, since online recruitment centres filter out CVs with no prior references.

x

Erica Ambler wrote:

The idea of someone giving up at 16 fills me with dismay. If you don't have ambition and self-belief at that age then when will you?

I didn't then, but I have it at 21. But then at 16 I was pumped full of Fluoxetine and Aripiprazole.

Largo's Shark wrote:

What does anyone have to say about 'intellectual' being a dirty word in this country, as opposed to somewhere like France?

It reflects very badly on French culture if this is true. Scepticism towards intellectuals in our country is quite encouraging, since most public intellectuals (eg Bonnie Greer) are full of shit and need to be treated with suspicion. Such scepticism is even more necessary in France, where public intellectuals are outright frauds who spend more time making up words than they do thinking.

Brown's on the right tracks with self-sufficiency, I think. It's hard (and perhaps undesirable) for a man to be fully self-sufficient - he exists in society, and his proper relation to his surroundings is perhaps one criteria for separating man from a modern, neutered, pseudo-male - but a desire towards independence (of both means and, to refer to scepticism towards intellectuals, mind) is an important quality. I certainly believe in the traditional idea of man-as-breadwinner, if only it were still economically viable.