“Living happily is a matter of choosing to fulfill the positive demands of your inner-self over your societal expectations.” ― Edmond Mbiaka
Clearly, being a woman, I do have quite a lot of arguments against some of the things I will be discussing in this entry, but I have taken time to talk to two men of different ages to try and grasp their opinions of what they believe is expected from the ‘Modern-Day Man’. So…what is MASCUALINITY? In different cultures and across different countries, masculinity can define different things. Typically, across the board discipline, loyalty, sternness, resoluteness and courage towards extremely dangerous challenges are all virtues men strive to achieve.
For society to work, it requires law, laws to protect society from criminal elements that are often aggressive, capable and tactfully malevolent and require equally aggressive forces to confront them. And over time, the responsibilities to fulfil these jobs to protect ‘the country’, ‘protect our families’, ‘protect our brothers’ have fallen upon the shoulders of men across time. And the archetypal behaviour required to succeed in these dangerous duties, has changed very little throughout history;for example, the MAJORITY of soldiers fighting on the front lines are men, the MAJORITY of presidents and prime ministers have been men, the MAJORITY of commanders/Military forces have been men. On the other hand, incompetence, doubt, sensitivity and frailness would be the traits implemented by the defeated, in other words the traits of a ‘weak’ man. Therefore, masculinity naturally offered the appropriate guidelines for boys to become formidable responders to chaos and adversity.
BE A MAN
Is what a lot of men hear growing up, even as adults.
DON’T BE A PU**Y!
Men hear these these words when they don’t live up to prescribed notions of masculinity. At the end of the day aren’t men are supposed to be tough.
GROW A PAIR
When I say tough, I mean, we want our men to be ‘invulnerable’, ‘physically and mentally strong’, ‘stoic’…. crying is most certainly out of the question, right? Because you’re a man, you’re not supposed to openly exhibit emotions. This mentality is doing more damage to society than most of us are likely realise.
Gender roles are 10000% holding us back as a society, I mean, from the moment that boys can talk, they’re taught that their natural emotions are a form of weakness. They’re not SUPPOSED to cry. There’s a pervading sense of powerlessness among men, and it’s a consequence of their inability to express themselves.
I also just want to put a disclaimer here: the things that I am discussing here I clearly haven’t researched or studied, I am writing from what I have heard from both my boyfriend, my dad and friends.
In my fantasy world, every walking man on this earth would identify as a feminist. Feminism, by definition, is fundamentally about equality(obviously), women these days seem to forget that too but that’s a rant for a different day. It’s the idea we should never place limits on a man (or woman) based on his or her sex. If we all adopted this mentality, being a man would literally mean being a living, breathing human and not having to live within the societal norms of what is expected in todays society.
And what a wonderful world that would be.